The Collaborators in Your Life

In wartime, being discovered as a collaborator can mean certain death. It means you’re helping the enemy. In business, projects need collaborators. The visionary to conceive the idea, the architect to draw it out. The engineers and contractors to actually build it.

Almost everyone needs collaborators. We can only do so much and then we depend upon others to show up in ways that we can’t. A collaborator is a co-laborer – someone with a different perspective and skillset than ours.

In a good marriage, there is a division of labor that allows the couple to navigate the world’s complexities. Somebody is buying the groceries and cooking the food while someone else pays the bills and watches the kids. Your weaknesses needs someone else’s strengths.

When a given spouse fails to collaborate according to expectations, friction results and the relationship suffers. We’re designed to work best in tandem with others. We marry with that in-built need. And when it isn’t met, we suffer.

The retirement years pose a different set of challenges. Most of the labor in life no longer needs doing. To stay vital, the couple needs to find some new project they can collaborate on.

For many older couples these days, the project may be “getting better at pickleball” or “helping with the grandkids.” The quality of the project and the alignment with skills and values translates to the quality of the marriage.

Some questions: Who do you collaborate with? What’s the quality of your relationship? What makes it easy or hard to collaborate with them?