Would You Rather Have a Good Marriage Or a Good Career?

Today on ESPN radio Colin Cowherd talked about David Brook's NYT essay "The Sandra Bullock Trade" in which he states that in happiness studies a good career can't make a person happy if that person is in a bad marriage. But a good marriage can keep people going strong even through bad career patches. 

Cowherd made reference to the number one cause of unhappiness in America: A long, insufferable commute. If you can, try to get a job close to home. 

Comments

[Angelo]

I would never take the trade of good career over good marriage. Until my beautiful wife died of cancer last September, we had a great marriage. She was a respected Attorney and many years ago, she made the decision to take a 40% pay cut and work three days a week instead of 5---for a better quality of life---more time to do the things that she considered "important" in life. I continued to work full time in a much less glamorous and much less lucrative career----but even with the full time hours, I never lost site of the fact that family comes first. In my opinion, you can have both---career and marriage---and the reality is that it's a matter of having the same goals as your spouse. Compatibility means the two people basically want to end up in the same place and basically agree on the same plan to get there. If you decide that marriage and family is the most important thing in the world (we did) nothing else really matters. Life is at the same time, great and tragic. Most of us experience highs and lows---successes and failures, elation and grim disappointment. If wife and husband are committed to being a united front against all the crappy things in the world, marriage will prevail over all else. Clearly, Sandra Bullock's husband wasn't serious about the two of them being a "team." I wonder if the writing was on the wall that he was a selfish jerk----and she married him anyway? That seems to happen a lot.

[jeffrey McMahon]

Bullock may be too good natured to read the depravity of others. But maybe she'll learn something from this debacle.

[Radio Russ]

I've had 2 hour commutes and they are a huge strain on your well-being because you always feel tired. Worse is being in a bad relationship which is a 24/7/365 drain on your psychic energy. Too often I've had both situations concurrently. You run out of both psychic and physical energy and life is miserable. I hope Bullock does learn from this. Angelo is right about how often nice people fall for jerks. This seems to be a good example of that.

[Angelo]

A friend of mine lives in Austin, TX and at least until a few years ago, Bullock was his neighbor. He's in a condo community and her compound was about 1/4 mile away. He'd actually run into her at movies and around town (clubs, etc.). She's originally from the Washington, DC area, where I live. People who have met her and known her all have the same story----she's too good hearted to be in entertainment, which is a cut-throat business and full of sleazy people. She's a very hard working person with ambition and drive---and talent---but supposedly, at her core, she's "normal" in a way that most people in Hollywood aren't.