Two-career relationships... hard knocks?

I was at a Pink Conference for Influential Women in Business yesterday when someone mentioned an article in Forbes online magazine entitled “Don’t Marry Career Women”. With a title like that I had to look it up – after all many of our clients [seem to] happily exist with each partner working. The article by Michael Noer presents a pretty bleak outlook for anyone considering marrying a working woman, predicting divorce, a messy house, lower “value” of the marriage on the part of both partners, cheating, and general unhappiness... Yikes! Fortunately Noer’s colleague at Forbes Elizabeth Corcoran hastily posted her rebuttal entitled “Don’t Marry a Lazy Man”.

The tone of Noer’s article was entirely upstaged for me by the positive and inspiring women who spoke at the Pink Conference. Each of these women is successful in balancing career, marriage or partnership, and children. A summary of my favorite points made by the speakers:

Set aside time for yourself
Outsource as many tasks as you can
Be true to yourself
Make difficult decisions using the ten year rule: “will I regret doing this/not doing this in 10 years?”