Our friendship didn’t survive our working together
They were the one! It was an instant connection for all four of us. Finally! They were even Jewish, our mothers would be so proud. Like every new relationship, there were texts, calls, and the obvious, friend requests. It was a match made in heaven. We’d met our dream married couple friends.
If you’re newly married, let me just tell you — the struggle is real, people. I almost think it should be a mandatory mention in at least one wedding reception toast! Right up there with, “Marriage is hard. It’s not 50 / 50, it’s 100 / 100 percent every day.” Maybe it should fall under the best man’s responsibilities? Somewhere between planning the bachelor party and holding the rings. It would probably sound something like this:
Guys, I love you. You truly found your soulmates. And if you thought that search was tough, wait until you try to find one married couple that you both genuinely enjoy. It’s not like it was for our parents. They had lots of central couple friends. They all seemed to live on the same cul-de-sac. All the kids got along and actually played outside. Sounds like a beautiful thing, huh? Yeah, it sure does. Well, good luck with that! L’chaim!
Until that becomes as mainstream as farmhouse sinks and BoHo chic, I’m afraid we’re going it alone, fully unprepared for the challenge of finding and keeping that ideal couple. Believe me, I speak from experience, because we thought we’d hit the married couple jackpot.
My wife and I had only been married for a few years and we had a beautiful baby girl. We were in the process of converting to Judaism when we met Noah and Rachel at a family event at temple. We were smitten kittens.
He was Israeli and she was a woman of color and they were from the Midwest! We were checking boxes like it was our job! They were both interesting and very intelligent, but super unassuming too. Their daughter had a mop top of pitch black hair. Our daughter has blond curls. With me in a wheelchair, we were a real life Gap ad.
The concept seems simple enough, but it is anything but. Trying to find other married couples where all four people click is something we’d really struggled with. We live in my hometown, so the vast majority of our friends are BM (before marriage, not bowel movements). That definitely played a factor in the scarcity of potential partners in crime.
Let me elaborate. Every marriage has items in the house from his and her previous lives. Maybe it’s his old, extremely comfortable recliner or her matching sets of glassware. Either way, this stuff is good, but they will never evoke the feelings you get from the stuff that you choose to fill your life with together. New just seems to instantly feel better because “mine” or “yours” is replaced by “ours”.
The idea of making new friends that are also married seems to be a similar right of passage. Unfortunately, there’s no Amazon Prime or Pinterest for friends. Wouldn’t that be great though? “Honey, I found a few couples that seem great. I added them to our BFF board!”
When we met Noah and Rachel for our first date, it was incredible how seamlessly the conversation ping-ponged across every possible area of life. We both brought our toddlers to dinner, which instantly removed all anxiety about every parent’s worst nightmare, the mid-meal terrible two meltdown. The stars must have aligned, because the kids were little angels. We talked about our pasts, the area, and even the difficulty of meeting other couples.
“They’re so great, right?” was the first comment as soon as we were out of earshot. They really were. We quickly broke the rule of first dates and texted them when we got home about how much we enjoyed dinner. We didn’t care that it broke social protocol. They were the ones! When you know, you just know, right?
Over the next few months, we saw each other at least once a week. We even did a quick weekend trip together. There was this unspoken assumption that we were obviously going to hang out every weekend. Not only was the group dynamic insanely fluid, but each person thoroughly enjoyed each partner individually. I could just as easily text Rachel as I could Noah. That’s really the sign that you’ve found “the ones.”
It was probably that solid foundation of trust that led to my wife suggesting Rachel for the open position of director of our family’s nonprofit. I instantly thought it was a great idea. Rachel didn’t have any nonprofit experience, but she was incredibly intelligent and driven. She’d also mentioned that since becoming a mother, she was struggling to see the real worth in her job in finance.
It was set. We would hire Rachel as our second, but highest paid employee. My wife takes a small salary for the two of us because I am on social security disability. We handled the hiring process with the utmost professionalism. We interviewed and checked references like she was a complete stranger. We were hiring Rachel to be an integral part of the family foundation that I started in 2012, after I was diagnosed with ALS. At that time, we had raised $1.5 million for awareness and research.
Everything continued to come together perfectly. This would be just another chapter of our story as lifelong friends. Besides, who ever heard of anything bad happening from working with friends or family?
When Rachel started, it was just more platinum cherries and pixie dust on the sundae that was our lives together. We worked from home and Rachel would come to our place on Tuesdays and Thursdays. There were obviously some growing pains, but that was to be expected. The communication was so fluid that we just kept on marching forward.
Most successful people, especially entrepreneurs, have their favorite metaphors or go-to work lingo. Mine, when it comes to production and output is, “It doesn’t matter that everyone’s working hard on the factory floor, if at the end of the day, we’ve got nothing but fenders and doors coming off the line and no cars.” This would become a constant thought and line I found myself saying at our weekly meeting.
Rachel came out of the gate with furious amounts of energy and ideas. I would get emails and texts almost daily that were outside of the normal work hours. She was amazing with people and spoke about the mission of our family foundation like it was her own. It was infectious! But like a one night stand that turns into a few hot dates, it started to fizzle — and fast.
We had meetings. We had coaching sessions. But right around the holidays, the really tough conversations started. First, between me and my wife, and then the three of us. It had been six months, and we were not seeing the progress we needed to see. She was very analytical, so we tried making the lack of production very black and white. “Your job is fundraising and broadening the reach and donor base. Right now, you’ve cost the foundation X. But you’ve brought in Y.” (Y was significantly less than X in this algebraic expression of life.) That was tough to swallow for all of us.
It’s important to remember that this is a small family foundation whose sole objective is to find treatments for the very same disease that has robbed me of the ability to walk, talk, and even breathe on my own. My wife took Rachel’s lack of performance to heart, as it couldn’t get more personal for her. I just hate to fail or lose at anything. That might have something to do with why I refuse to let ALS win.
During this troubling time, our friendship did start to feel strained. But they were our people, everything would be okay. Surely. It had to be.
It was a few days after our first Christmas as Jews. We had spent every one of the high holidays with Rachel and Noah’s family. On the business side, it should be noted that the end of year is typically a great time to get a last push of donations. We had reached a breaking point with Rachel because she’d done absolutely nothing for our end of the year giving campaign, which should have been her major focus at that pivotal time. To make matters worse, for the first time ever, we were actually in danger of not being able to make payroll in 6 weeks.
I couldn’t believe it. I sent her an email that may or may not have had “do or die” as the subject. It was all I could do not text her right away: CHECK YOUR EMAIL! How had it come to this? The foundation was on the brink of financial ruin. We more than doubled our payroll when we hired her, and she had not only failed to bring in money, she made a few terrible merchandise purchases that only added to her poor performance.
I waited until noon the next day to reply to my own email that had gone unanswered. “No need to respond. Your lack of response, says enough. Rachel, you’re fired.” That was it. Not only had I terminated her employment, I essentially chucked a hand grenade into our friendship. “Medic!” It was over. Just. Like. That.
I wish I could report that she came back a few days later, wanting to explain or at least apologize. But other than a couple of awkward sightings at temple, we never saw or heard from them again. It was a brutal break up. Especially for my wife, who tends to let fewer people enter her heart. It’s been 8 months and it still stings. They were our firsts.
The foundation was saved by a special event that we were able to host just days before the pandemic hit everyone, everywhere. Our friendship was not so fortunate.
Like any break up, there were feelings of loss and disappointment. We had really sewn our two families lives together into this perfect blanket that had been ripped away. What could we have done differently? Professionally and personally?
Making friends, real genuine friends as a married couple has remained a challenge. Maybe social media is an underlying factor in this search for connecting with others; we rapidly scroll through people’s lives (or the life they’re pretending to have) seeing what they do, where they go, and with whom they have as supporting characters. Maybe the only thing moving faster than our thumbs is our judgment.
My biggest fear about getting older that is become even more pronounced post break up is turning into a cynic. I want to remain in a glass-is-half-full, give-people-the-benefit-of-the-doubt, state of existence. This world has too many turbulent tides coming in hot to reside in such a negative space. This entire experience has forced our us as a married couple to have some really tough, loaded conversations.
But aren’t those that are the most important?
The idea of hiring a close friend may seem like a mistake in hindsight, but we don’t always have perfect vision in the moment. Both my wife and I were in long unhealthy relationships before finding each other. My hope is that we have the same luck again in finding friends who click with us. Insert cliché here about it’s always darkest before dawn but the truth is I don’t get up that early. We are just trying to remain open and full of faith that the people will enter the stage of life exactly when they’re supposed to hit their mark.