If your boss ever invites you and your spouse to a work party, do you accept immediately, confident your charming, supportive partner will boost your standing in the office?
Or do you automatically turn down the invitation, knowing there is a high chance your loud-mouthed, prickly other half will be an embarrassing blight on proceedings and your career?
Lucky you if you can answer yes to the first question. You have won one of life’s great lotteries by acquiring a vital, yet under-appreciated asset: a partner who makes working life easier rather than harder.
I thought about this the other day as I was reading When The Going Was Good, the recent memoir by former Vanity Fair magazine editor Graydon Carter. It ends with a list of life advice that includes what Carter thinks are the essential ingredients to look for in a mate, namely someone who is Fisk: funny, interesting, smart and kind.
He’s right. These traits are hugely important and not to be taken for granted in corporate life.
Over the years, I have come across a non-trivial number of people who have succeeded despite their actively disagreeable spouses.
As it happens, I have ended up with a partner drenched in Fisk qualities, a sentence I would type even if he did not read almost everything I write.
I had not realised quite how fortunate this makes me until this week, when I spoke to an academic who has spent years studying career advancement.
“For women with high ambition, you must find a partner who will support your career,” says Anna Carmella Ocampo of Spain’s Esade business school. “Otherwise, the evidence is clear: just stay single.”
This is partly because women are still stuck with what Ocampo calls the double bind of pressure to be a perfect partner and parent, as well as a perfect worker. For those overloaded with family responsibilities who can’t afford childcare and other home help, something often gives, like a career.
This pressure is pernicious, even for the brightest budding female leaders. A 2017 paper by three economists who studied the behaviour of students in an elite MBA programme in the US revealed this in bracing detail.
The research showed single, female students dialled down open displays of career ambition if they thought they were being watched by their male counterparts – and potential future partners – rather than by other women.
The single women participated “much less” in class than married women and, when asked for their job preferences, said they would work fewer hours, travel less and get paid less if they expected their classmates to see their answers. If they thought their answers would stay relatively private, they responded in the same way as non-single women.
Employees with emotionally competent spouses had as much as 26 per cent more of the traits that bosses value
But women are not the only ones who stand to gain a lot from a career-supporting spouse.
A paper Ocampo published this year suggests there are sizeable benefits for men and employers too. The study looks at something psychologists think is a big factor in success at work, so-called “emotion regulation ability”, or the way people manage their own and others’ feelings.
Existing research has focused on the way that high levels of this type of emotional competence can make you better at certain jobs, more valuable in teams and, crucially, more desirable to bosses.
But a worker can gain a lot from having a spouse with the emotional ability to boost their resilience, confidence and general capacity to navigate the world of work, Ocampo and her co-authors found.
Employees with emotionally competent spouses had as much as 26 per cent more of the traits that bosses value, compared with those with less helpful partners, the study showed.
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Importantly, that competence was drained if such spouses were burdened with family demands, meaning it is in both employees’ and employers’ interests if workers have the time and flexibility to help share domestic chores.
It might seem obvious that a happy home life makes for a happier and therefore more productive work life. But that is far from the case in many workplaces, where domestic life can often be regarded as at best irrelevant, and at worst an irksome distraction.
The bottom line is, do your best to find a full-Fisk partner. And then find a job with the flexibility to let you help them stay that way. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
