I Can’t Marry Into This…
Recently, a rather smart, beautiful young lady contacted me about her fiancé’s family business. Her future father-in-law – who owns the business – is overbearing and treats his son – her fiancé – poorly, failing to compensate him and not following through on promises to relinquish control. Even though the father has gifted significant numbers of non-voting shares to his three sons and one daughter, the other three siblings have long since left the business because they can’t get along with their dad. To their way of thinking, their shares are pragmatically worthless because they believe their dad will eventually drive away enough people that his business will fail. As a result, these siblings have been semi-excommunicated from the family because, to my understanding, the family business plays too large a role in their family relationships. In other words, if you want to be part of the family, you’d better put the business first in your life, your marriage, and your family.
“I can’t marry into this”, she said. The family business had already negatively affected their courtship. She was having a hard time respecting her fiancé because he wouldn’t stand up to his father. Afraid of retaliation, her fiancé would “take it” – whatever it was – just to keep the peace. The business had become the elephant in the room and was with them wherever they went – whether to the mall, to the theater, out to dinner – the elephant was always with them.
When I talked with the two of them, it was apparent that they loved each other. It was also evident that he had been beaten into submission over the years by his father. As a result, he often made tradeoff decisions that favored placating his father over pleasing his fiancée. For example, after his father had promised him a raise at the end of last year and then didn’t follow through, her fiancé decided to “let it go” rather than stand up for himself. Because she wants to have children and not be the primary breadwinner, she felt he had let her down by not pushing to earn enough to support the two of them. She connected dots he never connected. So, they delayed their wedding date – which was fluid and unannounced anyway – due to ongoing dysfunction between her fiancé and his father.
I asked them this: If the family business didn’t exist, would you two get married? They both responded with a resounding “Yes!”. So, I advised him to leave the business (advice I often give to those in their 20s who want to own the family business someday—but that’s another topic for another day) and establish himself as his own man, apart from his father and the family business. He needed to “leave” so he could “cleave”.
After four months, he hadn’t even started looking for another job, and she had grown fatigued.
Sadly, she recently called me and told me she was going to end their relationship. She needs a husband she can respect and one who can support them. She doesn’t appear to need much to live, and besides, she can support herself and earn well over $100K/year. But her Christian values are what they are, and she’s not going to compromise them. She wants a traditional Christian family where the husband is the head of the home and the primary breadwinner, while she stays home with the children and raises them.
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When the family business gets in the way of family relationships, I consider the business to be too enmeshed with the family. This happens more often than one might think. In this case, it really comes down to how much each family member values the business itself over their family relationships or vice versa. Apparently, the father values their business much more than his relationships with his four children. Well into his 70s, he’s still working every day, driving his staff hard and demanding perfection from them. It will take a serious health event to get him out of the business – but if/when that happens, it will be too late: his relationship with his children will be too damaged for him to depend on them returning and running the business. A fire sale may ensue, assuring him of a lower-than-market-value price for his business.
As a psychologist (MA, LP) who provides psychotherapy to family businesses, I default to valuing family relationships over the company because family lasts a lifetime while businesses come and go. Her fiancé desperately wants to please his dad, and that transaction can only take place within the family business because they have no relationship outside it. In some ways, he is still a little boy who desperately wants his father’s approval and is deeply hurt on the inside because he can’t seem to get it. He is caught in a never-ending cycle of trying to please his dad, getting rebuffed, and then trying again. It’s really very sad.
His choice is really between having a relationship with his father, however dysfunctional it might be, plus having a job, vs. leaving both to establish himself as his own man. That’s a daunting choice for any person. What he doesn’t see is the support he’d get from his finance if he took the risk. He can’t see the forest – all he sees are the trees.
This gal made the right decision. A decision to marry is always a packaged choice. She would marry her husband, but she would also marry her in-laws' dysfunction and the family business. That business – that elephant – would be with them at the altar, on their honeymoon, in their living room, and in their bedroom. It would always be with them in a dysfunctional and demoralizing way. It’s an elephant from which one can never get away, unless one makes some difficult choices.
Here’s what would need to happen:
Her fiancé needs to establish himself as his own man, which means leaving the family business for at least 5 years and working in a similar industry if he intends to return to it.
After 5 years, he can choose to go back to the family business, but he can do so on his own terms, or he can continue his own career path
If dad decides to sell the business to a 3rd party, she and her fiancé need to be OK with this – in other words, if all the stock he owns turns out to be worthless, he needs to be OK with this – no pot of money at the end of the rainbow
They need to establish family meetings about the family business that involve mom, dad, all four siblings, and their spouses. The meetings focus on:
Transition plan or an outright sale plan
Values that need to exist in the business
Establishing better governance so that the business can continue to thrive
Acceptance that ownership transferred to the 2nd generation need not be synonymous with day-to-day management – in other words, they can be owners and hire a CEO to run their business.
Celebrate family success over business success.
I’m hoping that by her ending their courtship, he’ll “wake up and smell the roses” and do what he needs to do to establish himself independent of the family business. By doing so, he may be able to win her back and, in time, own and run the family business. But given the current trajectory, I suspect he’ll have neither in the long run.