The 6 Marriage & Vocation Profiles: A Common Language For Clarity of Expectations

Originally posted October 22, 2014

Partnership in Marriage and Vocational Work

While it’s arguable that we are drawn to our partners because of their complimentary traits illuminating who we are not. There is no predictive precedence for guaranteeing that we will work together well. There are certain vocations, such as working together cross-culturally that require harmonious work/family life balance or at minimum, an acknowledgment of the defining roles. And yet seldom do we see intentional effort put forth to discuss how to value both parties’ unique callings. The classification of the differing postures is one such effort - to give common language to the posturing and any correlating tensions.

In Bobby Clinton’s leadership studies, he categorizes how couples work out their partnership in marriage and vocational work together using 6 common profiles. This paradigm helps unpack where tension may arise and where attention may be needed.

While the variety of profiles may be equally legitimate and acceptable, each couple must decide on their own (and likely along with their organization) how their values will be lived out. While these profiles may change for various reasons - considering limitations and seasons of life such as retirement, child-bearing, etc., it is important that couples understand, identify and discuss which profile they currently live out and which one they may want to live into.

1. Internal/External profiles

One spouse concentrates primarily on external (outside of the home) vocation as a career and is the chief source of economic support. The other spouse concentrates on the home environment (internal). Both participate as much as possible in each other’s sphere and needs.

2. Co-work/partnership profile

Both are engaged full-time in the SAME external (outside of the home) vocational work together. Both share EQUALLY in meeting the internal family needs.

3. Independent vocational profile

Both spouses give themselves to full time external vocation in DIFFERENT settings that are relatively independent of each other.

4. Alternative vocational profile

The spouses alternate the release profile, internal ministry for varying portions of time. Each releases and helps the other develop the external career or educational pursuit for significant portions of time. It IS a planned swap.

5. Delayed vocation profile

A variation of the internal/external profile. Both spouses had vocational pursuits before marriage. One spouse drops most external pursuits and concentrates on meeting the needs of the family. Eventually that spouse re-enters external vocation that is independent or joint vocation.

This often happens when couples begin to have children. The major implication is that 
changing roles and expectations must be clearly articulated.

6. Non-Harmonious profile

One or the other spouses opposes the other’s role in or some significant way hinders fulfillment of potential. Needs are not met whether economic, strategic or social. This is not a recommended profile!

Reflection on the Profiles:

Why is it helpful to label these postures of work/marital role operating? Unclear expectations of roles, whether in the workplace or home setting, cause equally disruptive harmony to the system.

In the working world, role clarity and perception is equated with performance. The level to which expectations are communicated is often the level to which performance is seen. “All of life is uncertain; it is the perception of too much uncertainty that undercuts focus and performance.” When expectations are not clear and remain uncertain, people feel threatened, confused and make poor decisions.

Being able to clearly identity where you fit in any role, but especially a key role such as marriage, gives language to any emotional dissonance, misfit or discord. On the other hand, the language may speak equal volume to what is going well and how you want to continue on in your current profile structure.

Simultaneously, this language speaks to personal and marital calling. Are you (singular and plural), in this particular arrangement, able to live your unique calling and way the world needs your fingerprint? While we work with couples and individuals cross-culturally, it is evident that many spouses are not content with the current unspoken arrangement. This discontent leads to attrition when not addressed or given space for equal voice.

There are many ways to utilize this tool. One suggested method is to set aside an hour to discuss this with your spouse. Each person answer the following questions without the other being able to defend or disagree - just validate. Create a safe and open space for the conversation. If needed, give it some space and come back to it or find an outsider to reflect with.

1. Which profile most accurately describes your current approach to vocation and family life together?

2. How well is your vocation/family life balance working right now?

3. Which profile or mix of profiles would best suit your next phase of development?

4. What could you be doing as a couple to grow in your partnership in marriage and vocation?

5. What challenges does this profile include?

If you find that you, as a married couple are at an impasse with how to proceed seek out an objective outside coach or counselor to help you continue this conversation.

Adapted from “Social Base Processing” by Dr Robert J Clinton, Barnabas Publishers, 1993.

Role Discontent

Originally posted Feb 11, 2019 on saraandjeffsimons@wordpress.org

Identity and Loss

Despite sharing the load of being a parent to young kids in a more egalitarian way, the current phase of parenting finds both of our young kids at my side of the bed regularly in the middle of the night. Pattering footsteps are heard for any number of reasons. In this particular stage I’m the one theywant first. A gift, I suppose… but a confused one for me, as I wrestle with God about how He wants to use me in this coming season. The cluster-roles of motherhood, transition coach, trainer and cross-cultural worker remain in regular tension.

Thanks to Jeff, I’ve been blessed in the last several months to have time away to reflect, dream, and consider what the next season in these roles might entail. A lovely week away with unlimited personal time, the ability to dream, sleep, and exercise at leisure allowed for an amazing time to consider the possibilities of our future. Yet as is the case in coming back to reality, I returned and re-engaged to acknowledge much to my surprise (again!), that my life consists of limitations!

You see, I’m not a “natural mom” in strengths or God-given gifting. I’m introverted for one, with ahigh need for alone time to rejuvenate and just function well. And because deep processing is part of my wiring and a high value, I need silence to hear my thoughts! For some reason my young kids don’t seem to understand that! A friend recently asked me, “Sara how do you get your introvert time as a mom?” The answer: “I don’t very often. It’s an ongoing struggle (sigh)!” My personality also begs to operate most effectively when asked to contribute my strengths of ideas,strategies or analytical skills. Sure, some of those are transferable to motherhood, but I don’t oftenfeel that I have my best foot forward in giftedness output in this particular role. I’m just not yournaturally-maternal, gentle, service-oriented, loves to [fill in the mom expectation here] personality.

Okay so maybe there are some idealized expectations to unpack there… but truly I wrestle with it daily! How do I reconcile not stewarding these other “gifts” during a season where one role takesprecedence? How do I find contentment amidst the grumpiness and irritation of mom-dum? When my calendar of events says “no upcoming events”, or worse, kids birthday parties for the next 7 Saturdays! In these times, I find myself down in a slump.

Even today, while I’m writing about calling, identity, and limitations, I’m loving the space! The research is confirming and I have a newfound hope in the coming opportunities to share withothers. I’m only slightly amused at the irony of being continually interrupted by a preciousdaughter, who is at home sick and sitting next to me.

I stop for a brief moment to cuddle and play a quick game of “I Spy” with my at-home-sick child and continue to accept my invitation to wrestle with my identity as mother and worker. When I’mhonest, I can acknowledge these interruptions make me grumpy, short-tempered and full of entitlement. I remind God that it was His divine plan for me to be hired for a formal member carerole when I was 9 months pregnant with my first child, almost a decade ago. He “called forth” my calling with such strange timing. I don’t want to wish these years away by any means. It’s these places of disruption in my calling, my plans, my best-foot-forward that I find hardest to embrace. The invitation to the disruptions being the life we were called to. I desire to live well into the roles of motherhood including the invitation to the LIMITATIONS that coincide.

It’s painful to face the unfulfilled longings left un-met within us. A single person desiring to be married but with no prospects. A couple desiring to be parents only to discover they are infertile. Another couple desiring to enjoy their new marriage, and quickly met with an unexpected pregnancy. A worker who desires to be seen for strengths in leadership with no possibilities for exercising those gifts. The role of missionary stolen as adult-caretaker of aging parents takes precedence. Whatever the unwanted role, how does one reconcile calling with God-given giftings in seasons of having to deny certain roles and accept other unwanted ones?

I believe the invitation is to acknowledge the un-met longings as losses. When I give credibility tothat which is unmet I’m met with sadness, and possibly disappointment. When I move too quickly past what is begging for attention inside of me, I hold onto it and without knowing, place those unmet longings elsewhere, often in other misdirected, unhealthy ways—on the love received from a spouse, on the success of a child, the gratitude of a boss, the performance of a co-worker.

These attempts mask my desires and longings only to temporarily escape the heartache and the reality of the things I dislike about the present. They try to erase the disruptions of life. Instead they take me on a winding road full of forks and turns, detours and dead ends. Here I will soon find myself back again and again if losses are unacknowledged. William Bridges (The Way of Transition) talks about transition or the “neutral zone” as the time to let go not so much of a relationship or a job itself but rather the time of letting go of hopes, fears, dreams and beliefs that we have attached to them. It’s in these attachments of hopes, dreams and longings that we redirect our stance towards a posture of embracing the losses in our current reality. We are called in this place and time to accept our limitations as a part of our calling, a part of our “normal”. To acknowledge limitations is to acknowledge loss.

What if instead of focusing on what we are giving up we are able to see what we are gaining instead? In this place of accepting the current reality and embracing the losses we are called to acknowledge that we are not in control. The places of “disruption” develop in us a deeper ability to empathize with others who are on the same journey of disruption. Our task-oriented selves begin to let go of our attempts to control, to direct, or to plan. In that space we are vulnerable. Painfully vulnerable. We’re invited into the place where our heart engages with the lack of control we feel. We mature in our understanding of development. We gain empathy for others. We gain understanding that life doesn’t turn out how we plan.

As poet David Whyte implores, we are called to spaces of alertness; and alertness is the hidden discipline of the familiar. We create in us a place to be moved and changed, impacted by the unfamiliar. We are put in a proper relationshipwith reality and the created order. We’re reminded once again that we were created and there isa great Creator with a bigger purpose than what we can fathom. A non-linear, uncomfortable road that when acknowledged and surrendered to, frees us from the unrealistic expectations that life is to be lived in a straight, continuous path. There is loss in accepting our lack of control. Simultaneously there is great gain in the freedom and invitation to accept the unknown and our greater calling in this in-between space.

[Finesterre] – “The road in the end

The road in the end,

Taking the path the sun had taken

The road in the end

Taking the path the sun had taken

Into the western sea

The road in the end

taking the path the sun had taken into the western sea

And The moon

and the moon rising behind you

as you stood where ground turned to ocean

No way to your future now

No way to your future now

Except the way your shadow could take

Walking before you across water going where shadows go

No way to make sense of a world that wouldn’t let you pass

Except to call an end to the way you had come

To take out each letter you had brought

And light their illumined corners;

And to read them as they drifted on the late western light;

To empty your bag

To empty your bag

to sort this and to leave that

to sort this and to leave that

To promise what you needed to promise all along

To promise what you needed to promise all along

And to abandon the shoes that brought you here

Right at the water’s edge

Not because you had given up

Not because you had given up

But because now you would find a different way to tread.

Because through it all, part of you would still walk on

no matter how, over the waves.”—David Whyte

Reflection Questions:
In this particular transition, as you consider identity-challenge, what qualities do you feel God is maturing in you?
How does knowing that transition causes great upheaval but also qualities of persistence, empathy, & depth change the way you approach it?
What way forward have you found for coping with current limitations?