Having a supportive partner is crucial for anybody’s growth when in a relationship. It can mean different things to different people. Here is a story of Suma, who always knew what she wanted in her partner, how it comes easy for her husband to be a supportive partner when it comes to her career, but how hard it was for them to work out their household partnership!
My husband is my go to mentor for professional life
I am very lucky to have my partner (Santosh) in my life. He is a calm, happy and satisfied person who is ambitious, brings out the best in me and has no expectations from me.
He always supported my aspirations and coached me to advance in my career. We did long distance for 3 years while I was finishing my PhD. Even though he doesn’t have a PhD, he is very accomplished and faced many different experiences and situations that helped him shape his outlook. If it were not for him and his experiences, I would have not been in the place where I am today.
A supportive partner was the key quality I was looking for when choosing my life partner
He coached me to network, negotiate, explore different paths, and expand my skill set. With the help of his mentorship, I successfully finished my PhD, landed a good job (hard in the biotech industry), got my green card and today working for a leading biopharma where I get to apply cutting edge technologies to advance drug development for cancer immunotherapy (my dream!). This is the easy part for us and to be honest that is why I married him. I always wanted someone to support my aspirations without having any ego.
However, things were not smooth when it came to household chores.
Two different personalities under one roof
In 2016, I came across this amazing author Gretchen Rubin. Her book “Four tendencies” helped me understand how different my partner and I are. Take this personality quiz if you are struggling to understand yourself or someone when it comes down to expectations (https://quiz.gretchenrubin.com/).
Obliger and Questioner
I am an Obliger. I want to please everyone, put others first and fulfil their needs whereas my husband is a questioner. He only does things when he is explicitly asked to and needs a reasoning to get anything done. This is true of his own expectations as well, so imagine how hard it is for him to meet someone else’s expectations.
Being an obliger, asking for help and giving a reason for every task that needs to be done is very difficult for me. I expect him to jump on everything I do (cooking, cleaning, laundry, planning for trips, taking decisions about mundane things etc) just like that without even asking.
From Day 1, he always did the dishes and laundry without me even asking because dirty laundry and dirty dishes bother him. Thats his reason, so he does it. But whenever I ask him to cook/clean house or do other chores, he never shows any enthusiasm. I used to get upset about this. At the same time, he never expected me to have a meal ready every day or have a clean house all the time. If I didn’t want to cook or clean, he was fine with us going out to eat or get food delivered or hire help for cleaning and cooking. I considered this lazy and selfish. Again, I am someone who hates to ask for help and expected him to be just like me and jump on things as needed.
How did we make it work?
What worked for us is, each of us do what we like to do, what we are able to do, and rest, outsource it.
Fast forward to 2020, we both have 1.5 hr commutes, we both have demanding jobs (his is much more than mine), we both are ambitious and we have a super active 2.5 yr old son. My husband works from 7 am-9 pm (including commute) and sometimes over the weekends. I work from 8 am-7 pm (including commute and hitting the gym after work). We have a wonderful nanny who picks up my son at 5 pm, bathes him, feeds him, cooks for us, and cleans the dishes!
So letting go of the expectations and understanding my partner and myself and coming to a common ground has been a lesson for me. I am thankful for this growth in myself.
Outsourcing has left me some free time to do the things I love
Thanks to our hard-earned money, we hired help in the form of nanny and cleaners. I am now able to spend time doing what I love, like trying out new recipes in the kitchen(checkout my recipes blog) , or hit the gym 5 days a week. This frees up my time in the evenings and the recharged me becomes a kid and spends 2-3 hr with my son. We dance, play with the cars (my son lives in the world of cars and trucks), read books, draw, play piano and I try to push in more calories sometimes while doing these activities (he hardly eats at the daycare).
Some recommendations
- Try taking this quiz https://quiz.gretchenrubin.com/ Understanding yourself and your partner is key to a better partnership
- If you can, use the money you earn to outsource some chores. It leaves you some time and energy to do things that are meaningful, useful and help you be happy.
About the author:
Suma is a friend from the times of school! Her intelligence, perseverance, dedication and simplicity had blown my mind ever since I came to know her from close proximity. She made it to the IITs. And even before she finished her graduation, she was one of the 8 students selected to participate in research at UC Berkeley. As you can see, I cannot stop gushing about her!
Suma is a Genomics Research scientist (Bristol Myers Squibb). In her own words, she is striving to be more self-aware and to lead a happy and a healthy life.