Have You Put a Price Tag on Your Relationships?

The following is adapted from The Five Pillars of the Freedom Lifestyle.

What’s your marriage worth to you? How about your relationship with your kids?

$1,000?

$5,000?

$50,000?

Hopefully, everyone reading this thinks that’s a preposterous question. The relationships with the people we truly love are priceless. It’s impossible to put a monetary value on them.

So you say…So you claim…

But then I meet people each week who do just that—without even realizing it. You might be one of them. 

Putting a price tag on your relationships, even unconsciously, can have many harmful effects, including divorce and estrangement at the extremes. Let’s look at how and why you may be inadvertently prioritizing money over your relationships and then walk through a strategy for how to stop.

Which Is More Important—Work or Your Relationships? 

One of the first questions I ask my potential clients is to paint a vivid picture of the lifestyle they want. Some have trouble doing this, while some can paint the picture with ease.

Many of them want a lifestyle in which they’re more mentally and physically present with their spouse and with their kids. It’s part of the lifestyle they want—but it’s not part of the lifestyle they’re living now.

Some of them tell me their current lifestyle, career, or workplace is impacting their marriage. It’s jeopardizing their important relationships.

Many of these individuals are making $250,000-plus salaries.

And when asked what’s holding them back from making a change, they often come back with a dollar amount.

“I need to make sure I keep my $XXX,000 salary.”

So let’s be brutally honest: that dollar amount is the price you’ve put on your marriage and relationship with your kids.

You might be saying to yourself, “Hey, that’s not fair! I’m doing it for my wife and kids. That salary is all for them!”

Look at it this way: If you’re making that salary now, and your relationships are suffering…

If you’re making that salary now, and you’re living in a comfort zone of misery…

If you’re making that salary now, and you’re worried about losing the people or things you love…

Then that dollar amount you’ve named is absolutely the price tag you are putting on those relationships. Because if you truly value your relationship with your wife and your kids, you’ll immediately put them ahead of money in the pecking order.

Pain Avoidance Is the Problem and the Solution

Now, I don’t write any of this to demean you. I’m not doing this to pass judgment. I’m writing it from experience. I’m writing it because I’ve absolutely been there.

I’m writing this because I’m heartbroken every time I see someone choose to remain in a comfort zone of misery—jeopardizing their relationships—instead of standing up and fighting.

A basic part of human nature is that we are often motivated more by pain avoidance than by the pursuit of happiness. Some people, more than others, let that pain avoidance mindset totally paralyze them.

If you’re one of those people, clearly envisioning your perfect lifestyle isn’t enough to get over the barrier of “perceived pain” you might have to endure to get to that lifestyle.

And, by perceived pain, I mean the what-ifs.

What if I work really hard to change, and I’m still stuck at the end of it?

What if I spend money on a coaching program, and it doesn’t work?

What if part of my transformation involves quitting my job or having difficult discussions with people around me?

I could go on and on, but those what-if questions represent pain points that may happen. That’s why it’s “perceived” pain—but not enough to stop some people in their tracks.

So let’s change the question.

Instead of asking you to define your desired lifestyle, I’m going to ask you:

What’s your life going to look like if it continues down the current path?

What if it leads to further distance from your spouse? Further distance from your kids?

What’s your life going to look like if you add the loss of these relationships to your current anxieties, like the feeling of waking up each day and dreading your workday? 

Think about how much pain will be derived from that lifestyle.

Think of how much pain you’re enduring now…and add to it.

How much pain will be derived from doing nothing?

The fact is, your short-term pain avoidance is setting you up for massive pain in the longer term. So if pain avoidance is your issue, focus on avoiding the much larger pain that will result from doing nothing.

Don’t Wait for Rock Bottom

Recently, someone on LinkedIn tacitly admitted to me that he’s waiting for the crisis to hit so that there’s so much pain it forces him to invest in changing his life.

Quite honestly, that’s what it took for me. The anxiety attacks, the snapping at my kids at the dinner table, the ruined weekends, the late nights… None of it motivated me to change until it became so loud, so overpowering, that I shut down my profitable PR/ad agency overnight.

I’ve had some folks tell me that sometimes it’s better to have a “lightning strike” moment like that to force change. And yes, there was some benefit to being forced to swim without the benefit of a life preserver. But it doesn’t have to be that way. If you really want to avoid pain, you’ll begin taking action now to make changes in your life before it’s too late.

If you really want to avoid pain, stop putting that salary-driven price tag on your most beloved relationships and make a change before you head off the cliff.

Know this: the earlier you act, the more likely it is that you can build the lifestyle you desire while strengthening your relationships and building the financial freedom that allows you to have the experiences that fulfill you. So don’t wait for rock bottom. Make a change today.

For more advice on improving your relationships and setting your priorities, you can find The Five Pillars of the Freedom Lifestyle on Amazon.

Curt Mercadante is an international speaker, coach, trainer, and disruptive entrepreneur whose mission is to save the world by helping people fight for lives of freedom and fulfillment. Curt's speeches and training empower individuals to live their Freedom Lifestyle, and he also hosts the popular Freedom Club Podcast. Raised in the Chicago area, he and his wife, Julie, now live in Charleston, South Carolina, with their four children, when they aren't traveling the world. Curt is a diehard fan of the White Sox, a superhero nerd, and can frequently be found at his local boxing gym.