The Netflix comedy couple Tom Segura and Christina P. announced their separation in July after almost 20 years of marriage and two sons. While this might seem like just another Hollywood divorce, this comedy team worked closely together for parts of three decades. Their separation raises some interesting questions about the challenges of balancing personal and professional relationships,particularly for couples who work closely together.
One might ponder:
- Is their problem that the comedy got stale?
- Was the problem specific to couples in a showbiz working relationship?
- Are there lessons for other dual-career couples in business together?
Let’s explore these issues to see whether there is a secret longevity formula for couples who spend a great deal of time together, and whether a work-play relationship needs a few guardrails to keep intimacy from smothering, and ultimately extinguishing, the flames of romance.
The “Always On” Phenomenon
Show business professionals tend to always be performing. Often this stems from personal insecurities, fear of intimacy, and distrust of strangers. But it is also a professional strategy to maintain branding. Performers retreat behind their carefully crafted public façade. With comedians, this problem is exacerbated: actors are not expected to always act, nor singers always to sing, but comedians are expected to always be funny. The expectations can be exhausting.
A myriad of successful comedians have disclosed details of their bouts with depression, including Robin Williams, Richard Lewis, Gary Gulman, Sarah Silverman, Jim Norton, and Wayne Brady. Jim Carrey, who is arguably the most successful cinematic comedy star of the last 30 years, has repeatedly discussed his history of depression. So, if we understand the psychological pressures of being in comedy, we can imagine how a relationship with a comedian can be stressful and how a relationship between two comedians might ultimately prove impossible. Viewed through that lens, the dissolution of Lucy and Desi’s marriage is easy to understand.
But how does this superficial analysis explain the long marriages of George Burns and Gracie Allen, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, or Anne Bancroft and Mel Brooks? It doesn’t. Comedians might be challenging to live with, but those challenges aren’t insurmountable. We can also point to many other show business marriages of long duration, such as the 50-year marriage of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, as well as Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick (38 years), Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson (38 years), Angela Bassett and Courtney B. Vance (29 years), John Travolta and Kelly Preston (29 years), and Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell (never legally married but together 43 years), Sam Elliott and Katharine Ross (42 years), Mark Harmon and Pam Dawber (39 years), Denzel Washington and Pauletta Washington (43 years), and Michael J. Fox and Tracy Pollan (38 years).
When Personal and Professional Lives Become Intertwined
One notable aspect of the long-lived marriages mentioned above is that the spouses maintained separate careers, but generally didn’t make a habit of working together. Of course, Newman and Woodward, Hawn and Russell, and others have occasionally worked together. Newman even directed his wife in Rachel, Rachel (1968), his directorial debut, and again in The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (1972), The Shadow Box (1980), and The Glass Menagerie (1986). Newman and Woodward both said their marriage helped their film collaborations. Actor and filmmaker Ethan Hawke explored the couple’s marital and working relationship in an HBO documentary entitled The Last Movie Stars. What comes across is a portrait of mutual professional respect, stemming from a recognition of each artist’s high competence. There is also profound trust and a shared vocabulary from years of intimacy that facilitates communication on the set.
Newman and Woodward’s relationship might be the exception that proves the rule, given what we’ve seen in recent years from collaborating artists who worked closely together but couldn't sustain their romantic relationship. One example is Johnny Galecki and Kaley Cuoco, whose off-screen relationship ran parallel for a time to their on-screen personas. Over 12 seasons, their characters on The Big Bang Theory fell in love, dated, broke up, reconciled, and eventually married. In real life, Galecki and Cuoco had a romantic relationship that faltered, and their real-life breakup mirrored their characters, “hit a little too close to home,” and made the job tough for a time.
Network TV performers also face longer days on set and longer seasons working together than film actors or actors in off-network shows with fewer episodes annually. The set and ensemble cast can feel like a world apart, which is the perfect recipe for the “too much intimacy” conundrum. Romantic relationships tend to benefit from time apart, as “absence makes the heart grow fonder.” But, as the old quip asks, “How can I miss you if you won’t go away?”
We can also mention the high-profile 2012 divorce of Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez. The two initially came together through a professional collaboration. In an exchange of services, Lopez agreed to appear in Anthony’s music video for his song "No Me Conoces" if he would sing a duet with her. That performance of "No Me Ames" became the B-side of a single from Lopez's 1999 debut album. Romance and artistic collaboration were on hold until early 2004. By then, each had extricated themselves from other romantic entanglements. They married by summer, “in a quiet ceremony held at Lopez's Beverly Hills residence.” The couple performed their first live duet as a married couple at the 2005 Grammy Awards.
What followed was close collaboration on several projects, including starring together in the movie El Cantante, which opened theatrically in August 2007, and a live concert tour beginning in September 2007. During their show on Nov. 7, 2007, Ms. Lopez announced, "Marc and I are expecting." The announcement caught Mr. Anthony off guard, but on Feb. 22, 2008, Ms. Lopez gave birth to twins. Yet by 2011, the couple had announced a separation.
Around this time, the celebrity press speculated that Mr. Anthony had controlled Ms. Lopez's music career and that her branching out to appear as a judge on American Idol had loosened that control. However, Ian Drew, senior music editor of Us Weekly, conceded, "Both of them are very controlling. You can't control a controlling person.”
Did each of these romances suffer from the relationship being “too much, too close, all the time”? Galecki/Cuoco and Anthony/Lopez seem to have worked together in more of a pressure-cooker situation than Newman and Woodward, whose four major collaborations spanned 18 years. With Anthony and Lopez, there also might have been an element of competitiveness and need to control that was absent from Newman and Woodward’s mutually appreciative relationship.
Of course, tabloid accounts only hint at issues and require us to read between the lines. For more substantive guidance, we might ask whether social science research has uncovered insights that could form general rules. In fact, several studies offer findings relevant to dual-career, coworker couples.
Takeaways from Social Science Research on Coworking Couples
A substantial body of psychological and family research suggests some good news: working closely together does not inherently damage a marriage. What seems to matter is how the couple experiences the closeness. Does the collaboration foster cooperation and shared purpose? Or does it diminish one partner’s autonomy, thus creating chronic conflict? Here are a few takeaways from pertinent studies:
More time together is not necessarily bad — A particularly relevant 2021 study, entitled Time Spent Together in Intimate Relationships: Implications for Relationship Functioning, examined daily interaction among 49 married couples. Researchers found that couples who spent a larger proportion of their time together talking reported greater relationship satisfaction, more positive perceptions of their relationships, and greater closeness. By contrast, couples who spent more time arguing were less satisfied and perceived more negative qualities in their relationships. Thus, the quality and character of the interaction appear to matter considerably more than sheer exposure.
Autonomy appears to be a critical factor — A three-year longitudinal study of 164 dual-earner couples examined spouses' work experiences and subsequent marital satisfaction. Researchers noted that when both spouses experienced high levels of self-direction at work, marital satisfaction was highest. In other words, when both partners are heavily involved in their professional work, having control and autonomy within their individual roles seemed to benefit the relationship. This suggests that feeling trapped or controlled is a bigger problem than simply working side by side.
Too much work can become a genuine marital problem — A 2012 study entitled Marital and Family Satisfaction as a Function of Work–Family Demands and Community Resources: Individual- and Couple-Level Analyses involved 260 dual-earner couples with children. Researchers found that total couple work hours were strongly negatively associated with marital satisfaction. It didn’t seem to matter how those work hours were distributed between husband and wife; after a certain threshold of combined work hours, marital satisfaction declined. This was not a study of coworker couples, so these overworked couples were denied time with their spouse. However, the study does hint at the need for work-life balance, which coworker couples can ignore, thinking that being together in a work setting should suffice.
5 Ways for Making a Dual-Career/Coworker Marriage Work
When we put all the preceding information together, a picture of what works and what doesn’t starts to emerge; from that, we can distill five key guidelines, as follows:
- Be authentic — The pressure to perform is not exclusive to the entertainment industry. Businesspeople must project confidence and competence. But the client-facing or Board-presenting persona can get tedious when you maintain it in every coworker interaction. It’s especially important to drop the façade when you’re trying to deepen an intimate relationship with that one special coworker.
- Exercise discernment — Should you be working side by side with your spouse? An old adage says, “A friendship built on business is better than a business built on friendship.” When deciding, we suggest employing the Newman-Woodward standard: do you admire your spouse’s professional competence? If the answer is no, you probably shouldn’t work together.
- Express appreciation — Express your admiration for your spouse’s professional competence regularly. Taking their professional contributions for granted is as corrosive for your relationship as taking their contributions to the home for granted.
- Respect and guard autonomy — What seems to work for married coworkers is knowing their unique contributions are respected, encouraged, and appreciated. Don't try to control your spouse’s process or product. Instead, partner with them to bring out their best. If you feel your spouse is too controlling, raise that concern early, before frustration boils over.
- Maintain work-life balance — Do not assume that since you’re together at work, you don’t need time together apart from work. A co-dependent workaholic marriage is a recipe for disaster. Intentionally carve out time to relax and unwind together, recreate together, talk, and enjoy physical intimacy. Even the hardest-driven power couple still needs regular moments to simply be two people enjoying one another’s company.
Even with the best intentions, some couples find the pressure of balancing their personal and professional lives too difficult to overcome. When separation or divorce becomes the next step, having experienced legal guidance is essential, particularly when shared businesses, finances, or professional interests are involved.
Contact our attorneys today to help you understand your options and protect your interests. Call us at 212.682.6222 or contact us online.