The Key to Bliss for a Dual-Career Couple? A Contract.

[c]ouples face major transitions at three life stages, and at each one they need to revisit how their relationship and careers fit together. They need to re-contract. Each transition revolves around a critical question.

• The first, ‘How can we make this work?’, comes early in a couple’s relationship, when they need to combine parallel lives into one joint one.

• The second question, ‘What do we really want?’, comes when couples can afford to be fed up with doing what they feel they ought to do.

• The third, ‘Who are we now?’, hits when the commitments that often sustained couples early on—mortgages, children, and career acceleration—are behind them.