Nobody warns you that the calendar becomes a negotiation. I remember the first time it really broke. He had a board meeting in New York, the kind you don't move. I had a client presentation in Chicago, the kind that took three months to get on the calendar. The nanny had a family emergency. And our son woke up with a fever.
We stood in the kitchen at 6 AM, both half-dressed, both looking at our phones, both doing the math on whose thing could be rescheduled with the least damage. Neither of us said it aloud. We were both calculating: whose career takes the hit this time? Who owes whom after this? How did we get here again?
That was the morning I realized we didn't have a system. We had good intentions and calendar invites and a vague faith that it would work out. And it had worked out, mostly, until it didn't.
You both travel for work. Not constantly, but enough. Enough that every month involves some version of the same conversation: who's going, who's staying, who's covering, who's rescheduling. Enough that you've had the fight about whose trip matters more without ever using those words.
This isn't about balance. Balance implies something static, something achievable. This is about logistics. The operational reality of two people with careers that require presence in other places, and a life that requires presence at home.
What actually needs solving
The obvious part is coverage. Someone has to be home, or at least available. If there are kids, this is non-negotiable. If there aren't kids, it's less acute but still present. But coverage is the easy problem. The harder ones are underneath it.
Whose work takes priority, and when? Every two-career couple has an implicit hierarchy, even if they've never said it aloud. Sometimes it's earnings or seniority. In other instances, it's whose job is "more demanding" that quarter.
A friend of mine, a partner at a consulting firm, told me she and her husband finally wrote it down. They documented it: Q1 and Q3 are her priority quarters. Q2 and Q4 are his. Big trials for him, big client pitches for her. "It felt ridiculous when we did it," she said. "Like we were negotiating a treaty. But it stopped the constant relitigating. We just look at the calendar, and we know."
