Only Cheaters Win, Part 1

I was the fair-haired boy, the chosen protégé of our founder and CEO. I had been hired one semester short of completing my MBA by a small manufacturing and distribution company. They had never had an MBA working for them and didn’t know exactly what to do with me. So, I got to do a lot of everything. I was on the fast track. Promotions and increased responsibility came fast. And the CEO took me under his wing and began to mentor me. It was a great post-graduate education and the responsibility and attention I was receiving were huge ego boosters.

Then I got caught cheating.

The CEO came to my office and shut the door as he entered the room. He had a look on his face that I had not seen before. He was very serious and said, “I need to talk to you. You are working late every night, you’re taking work home with you, and you’re here on the weekends…You’re working too hard and I want you to cut it out.”

I said, “Well we have a lot going on. We have this new information system we’re implementing and the inventory project really needs a lot of attention.”

His response was very firm: “This business is a fleeting thing and that woman at home is not.”

I said, “She understands. She knows we have a lot going on…”

I barely had the sentence out, before he pounded his fist on my desk and said, “Damnit, I said cut it out! You think she understands and then one day you go home and she meets you at the door with her bags packed as she is leaving because she doesn’t understand anymore. It happened to me and I don’t want it to happen to you.”

I got caught cheating. Jim saw what I didn’t see. I was pouring all of my physical and emotional energy into my work. Even when I was home I wasn’t really there. I was giving the best of me to my job and I was cheating Laura. My employer was getting the best of me and Laura was getting nothing but the leftovers.

Let’s face it. We all cheat. If our marriage has lost its passion, it’s because we are cheating. But here’s the paradox. If we want our marriages to move from merely surviving to thriving - we have to cheat.

You see, the only way to take our marriage to a “hole nuther level” is to cheat. When it comes to having a thriving marriage, ONLY CHEATERS WIN!