Having a Supportive Spouse Is The Best Life Hack I’ve Found

Having a Supportive Spouse Is The Best Life Hack I’ve Found

The older I get, the more important this seems to become.

A man and his wife smiling. Photo by Kampus Production from Pexels.

I watched my income from writing climb past $10,000 in a single month. There was a spreadsheet open on my laptop with income projections, publishing goals, and plans that suddenly seemed within reach. Then, a few months later, an algorithm update happened, and I was staring at a huge drop in earnings, which made it hard to pay the bills.

“I think I need to get a normal job,” I said.

My partner, Marie, looked up from the other end of the sofa.

I’d already opened a recruitment website before she even answered.

“What brought this on?”

I clicked through another listing while explaining how people don’t lose that much income that quickly unless they’ve completely misunderstood why they were succeeding in the first place.

“I’m serious,” I said.

I remember staring at the screen for a second before saying something that had probably been sitting in the back of my mind for weeks.

“What if I was never actually good at this?”

For a moment, she didn’t say anything.

Then she reached over and lowered the laptop screen.

“You’ve been saying that for months,” she said. “The only thing that’s changed is the number on the dashboard.”

Before I could respond, she pointed toward a stack of notebooks sitting beside the television.

I looked over.

Didn’t even have an argument.

Most of those pages had been filled before anyone was reading them.

Funny what sticks in your memory.

I can’t remember a single job listing I looked at that night.

But I still remember closing the laptop, feeling her wrap her arms around me, and hearing her say, “We’ll figure it out.”

“Here we go again,” my friend said.

We were sitting outside a coffee shop when he said it. I looked across the table waiting for him to explain what had happened this time.

“What now?” I asked.

“I told her about the promotion,” he said, stirring his coffee. “She asked why I couldn’t just be happy with the job I already have.”

Then he laughed.

So I laughed too.

At the time, I don’t think I’d fully appreciated how much easier it is to build something when the person closest to you isn’t questioning why you’re trying in the first place.

Not really.

A few months later, we met again after work. I remember him setting his phone down on the table before finally speaking.

“I turned it down,” he said.

After that, our conversations started sounding different. We talked about job openings he never applied for, courses he never enrolled in, and business ideas he’d stopped bringing up altogether. There were also text messages sitting unopened because he already knew where the discussion would end.

This was a guy who used to send applications for jobs that felt slightly out of reach. Now he was talking about whether any opportunity was worth the argument waiting for him at home afterward.

People often talk about supportive partners as though they’re some nice bonus. But somehow, I think they’re talking about one of the biggest variables in a person’s future.

Perhaps that’s why I still think about conversations like that whenever somebody asks me for career advice. Most people assume ambition gets crushed by failure, rejection, or bad luck. Yet I’ve known people who had talent, opportunities, and a clear path forward sitting right in front of them.

The thing that wore them down wasn’t one big argument. Rather, it was hearing some version of “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” often enough that they eventually stopped asking themselves what was possible.

For most of my life, deaths in the family felt like isolated events. Somebody passed away, everybody attended the funeral, and eventually life settled into something that looked familiar again.

Lately, I’m not so sure.

My aunt passed away three days ago. My uncle was just a few weeks before. So, maybe that’s why I’ve spent the last few days paying attention to things I barely noticed before like relatives forwarding updates between different parts of the family and the same phone ringing throughout the day. Or, conversations with my mom that start with one piece of news and somehow end forty minutes later about something completely different.

I was sitting on the sofa the other evening with Marie, talking about family updates. At least I think that’s where the conversation started. But somewhere along the way, we ended up talking about my late grandfather, old family stories, and memories I hadn’t thought about in years.

Funny where conversations end up.

By the time Marie and I finally headed to bed, the drinks had gone cold on the coffee table. The grief still hurt like heck, of course. Yet, we’d spent the last hour talking about people as they lived instead of what happened after they died.

A few weeks ago, I was reading an article about life hacks. Every few paragraphs, there seemed to be another tip promising to save time, boost productivity, or make life easier.

“Wake up at 5 a.m.,” one of them said.

A few lines later, there was something about meal prepping on Sundays. After that came cold showers, habit trackers, standing desks, and an app that was apparently going to help me spend less time on my phone.

“Small changes compound over time.”

The article kept going after that. Page after page of systems, shortcuts, and optimization strategies. I don’t think there was anything particularly wrong with the advice itself. Most of it probably works for somebody.

Yet I kept thinking about something else.

Most of us already know how these articles end.

You spend an evening downloading apps, researching routines, and convincing yourself that a better system is going to solve the problem. Then work gets busy, life gets in the way, and a few weeks later you’re looking for another article promising the same thing.

I’ve done it too.

I’ve bought notebooks I barely used, spent hours building spreadsheets, and wasted entire afternoons trying to optimize things that probably didn’t need optimizing in the first place.

What actually makes life easier, though?

A friend of mine spent years trying to build a business while working full time. Every few months, something would go wrong. A client would leave, revenue would drop, or a project he’d spent weeks working on would completely flop.

Whenever those things happened, he’d go home and talk through it with his wife. Sometimes she had advice. Most of the time she didn’t. She’d sit across from him at the kitchen table while he explained what happened and why he thought everything was falling apart. A few years later, the business was doing well enough that he could leave his job.

I can’t remember a single productivity app that changed my life. But, I can remember who sat beside me when my writing income collapsed. I can remember who listened while I questioned whether I was good enough to keep going. And, I can remember who was still there after the conversation had gone in circles for the third time.

I still read those articles about productivity sometimes.

Probably more than I should.

But the older I get, the more suspicious I become of any habit claiming to be the ultimate life hack. Because most of the things that have genuinely changed my life haven’t been apps, routines, or systems.

They’ve been people.

“Know yourself, your values, and what really matters to you. Because marrying the right person isn’t just a relationship goal — it’s a happiness strategy.” — Steven Bartlett.

Did you find this article interesting? Consider reposting this story so more people can read it.