My father is an entrepreneur and I unintentionally absorbed a lot of lessons from him as I was growing up. One that I keep coming back to is the idea in business that you can pick any two of the following three, but you don’t get to have all three.
Time, money, or quality.
Choose any two.
When making purchases, you can get a great quality item at a deal, but you’ll have to wait for it;
OR
You can buy a great quality item quickly (but you’ll pay a premium);
OR
You can make a quick deal that might not be the best quality.
With rare exceptions, I’ve found this to be true for running a business and making purchases, but it also holds when applied toward romantic relationships.
You and your partner can either make (and save) a boatload of money and have a vibrant connection but not a lot of free time (either together or individually);
OR
You and your partner can have a fulfilling connection and plenty of free time, but trade off the rat race and trying to earn and accumulate as much money as possible;
OR
You and your partner can have free time and also have boatloads of money, but the free time could be lacking in authentic connection with one another or spent pursuing individual interests.
The hard part is when one person in the relationship chooses a different pair of priorities than the other holds. Perhaps this just goes back to our core values/needs, but a major mismatch here has the potential to cause frustration and resentment.
My Was-band valued money and free time. He wanted to accumulate piles of cash in the bank and was resistant to spending it on things — even if they would make our day-to-day life more comfortable or more convenient. He wanted free time to game on his computer with his online friends but was less interested in connecting in our relationship unless it meant sitting side by side on the couch watching tv…and not connecting.
He would joke about how I was the gas and he was the brakes when it came to spending money, unless it was about gaming equipment, like a faster mouse or light-up keyboard. (For the record, I grew up poor and never spent money that would make it hard to put food on the table or pay the bills, even when I was working two minimum wage jobs simultaneously and he was jobless.)
When we were divorcing in the early days of the pandemic, he struggled to understand why I was so resistant to selling our house (and instead was trying to figure out if I could buy out his share of the equity) because to him, a pile of gold coins in his hand was worth more than a house that may or may not lose value with a global health crisis. Cash in hand to him meant options. For me, that home represented safety and security and was the place I had cashed in my Roth Ira to purchase and update. Selling, to me, meant a year and a half of anxiety and uncertainty. It meant spending more money than the monthly mortgage total in order to live here and there in low-quality rentals. It meant moving five times and living with strangers — who were wholly unconcerned with my autoimmune disease or the pandemic raging around us and how I might be adversely affected by their actions— while I struggled to find a more permanent solution.
Money in and of itself is not a thing I value; it’s what I can trade for the money that I prize. But to him, it was the be-all and end-all symbol of success.
While I love to hunt for a bargain, I have always valued quality and free time over accumulated finances. Like any savvy shopper, I watch flight prices before I book airline tickets, but I nearly always choose the shortest duration of a flight over the cheapest tickets (and when I can, I opt for the most luxurious seats I can comfortably afford without taxing my bank account). In business, I know I could hustle a whole lot more and earn more money, but I’d rather have a better quality of life, which to me, means time that is my own to dedicate as I choose.
Throughout my marriage, but especially in the end, it was apparent that my ex and I were not aligned in values. We had different priorities, and it took its toll.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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