Your Work Wife and Your Husband.
I am the Work Wife to so many of my friends and clients. And many of them have husbands or partners, but I bring something a little different to the table. Here’s how it all works.
I distinctly remember sharing all of my dreams and fears and hopes with my parents when I was in the beginning of building my business. And they were freaked out and told me to become a teacher instead. I shared with my friends and they were confused and stressed and triggered by all the potentially-bad outcomes. It was deflating. I learned quickly who you could share with and who you couldn’t. Fast forward and I have been self-employed on my own with no outside support for over 10 years. I’m proud of that! In that time I have opened 3 businesses / brands and am now a Certified Life Coach, too. In my life coach training, we spent a lot of time understanding thoughts and the brain, and how unconscious thoughts shape our lives. And even how other people’s thoughts influence us. And I began to realize that what I wanted was to help women hear THEIR own thoughts, not the world’s, not their loved ones, not the scared brain’s thoughts either. I began to be the Work Wife for many women who needed someone to help them learn how to see their own thinking as separate from their partner’s while still preserving their important relationships.
Your Loved Ones–
Might not be managing their minds. They might not understand thought work and are still under the spell of the negative / scary stories we are taught about women (they aren’t good with money, they need a man to keep them safe, they aren’t as good at business as men, etc) and this will come across as very hurtful, especially if you don’t see it is their unconscious fears and thoughts speaking.
Might be triggered by your decisions. They might only think about how THEIR life will change. This might scare them enough that they can’t help but express their doubt.
Might believe that they have to understand everything in order for you to get ‘approval’ and though I understand the desire to get ‘buy in’ and to keep a relationship strong, the reality is that we don’t all have to understand one another to support one another.
Might think they know what’s best for you. Cultivating an inner knowing about what is best for you is your responsibility, not theirs.
Have lots of thoughts about you and have known you a while and that will often affect how they show up to ‘support’ you.
Are not on your payroll. And they’re not your boss. If you’re going to run your own business, and you want it to be yours, you’ve got to cultivate your own sense of being in charge of its success.
Your Work Wife–
Is committed to helping you achieve the goals YOU define.
Is not triggered by your thought or actions.
Has clean thinking about you. She is managing her own mind so that she is aware to not make anything you say or do about her.
Accepts you as the CEO of your business, not your husband.
Helps you see where Patriarchy has shaped your thinking and helps you decide if you want to keep it.
Is committed to YOUR values, without judgement.
Sees you as powerful, creative, whole, and capable to achieve whatever it is that you want.
Helps you with both the business and emotional sides of business.
Teaches you about business without a superiority complex.
Questions old school business practices that are actually quite oppressive.
When you’re endeavoring to do something BIG, you need enthusiastic support from someone who isn’t mired down in patriarchal thinking or old school oppressive business or thoughts that trigger fear. You might feel safe by deferring to your partner but what you really need is to cultivate safety within YOURSELF. And that is what a Work Wife is there to help you achieve.
Now I’m talking like there are a bunch of Work Wives out there and what I’m really sharing is that this is how I operate with my clients. What I’ve realized is that most of the time they have bought into the stories society has about women in business and they also don’t quite feel entitled to spend money that they can’t 100% guarantee a return on but that is not how business works.
I distinctly remember my ex husband bringing home a GIANT flatscreen tv one day. He had not asked me about spending money on this. He just wanted to, and justified it in his mind. The next day I went to get groceries and later in the day he called me tensely upstairs to grill me on every line item on the bill and why I needed to get it just so that he could feel in control of the money. How he treated me was much different than how he thought of himself around money.
This is just one reason I decided to leave. This is also a reason I do what I do. I want your relationships to function well. But they can’t if one party is unconsciously believing they are better than the other human. Business has a way of revealing and then potentially correcting these thought errors. When a partner is confronted with their thinking, they get a chance to show up as the person you choose to be with, or sometimes they reveal themselves to be the kind of person you decide to leave. Most of the time, with my clients, their relationships are made stronger by this type of process.
A Work Wife (aka, me) helps you by being there for you without doubting your capacity, even if you do.