What they really don't teach at Harvard Business School

There is a great old book called, "What they don't teach you at the Harvard Business School." Its all about negotiating and getting ahead in office politics, etc. Today, I got a huge dose of extracurricular stress that seemed to come out of no where. I share my virtual business world with one of my partners Matt. Since leaving the bank, he and I have met everyday, sometime spending the entire day at Starbucks or similar places thinking about what to do next. We worked closely enough over the years that I've come to know him extremely well, or at least I thought I did. We'd come to rely on each other and while one might expect us to be closer friends after spending such enormous time together we're nearly joined at the hip. Recently, as I've been so stressed I've become more and more critical about his work habits etc. For my own sanity, I need him to work as hard,as well and as effectively as I perceive that I am. In a two man company there simply isn't any place to hide. Recently, his effort has been getting increasingly erratic, he's given to spending hours mindlessly surfing the Internet and insisting that's somehow helping us by copying ads for exotic financing companies or brokerage firms with whom we have no access... and playing with his on-line stock portfolio - anything but effectively working on our business affairs. Now I know that we have complimenting skills and that his computer abilities and intuition about most business things is reliable but I was about to get really frustrated with his contributions. Then, over breakfast, trembling and almost about to cry he tells me an almost unbelievable story about his wife abusing him. Once he got started, he talked for 2 hours about her, who I've known socially for 10 years and have always thought was elegant and sweet - in a country girl, gone city -chic sort of way. Well, she has always been a spendthrift, something my Scotch upbringing considers a genetic character flaw. Apparently, I had no real insight into how terrible its been. While she rails at Matt for not being man enough to be truly successful, she's spending thousands of dollars a month on clothes, accessories etc. I'd heard that she'd gone and bought a Mercedes SUV and taken the money from their savings account - paying cash and putting the car in her name alone and I knew that she'd insisted that their home (second marriage for both of them and they lived in her "old" house, be put in her name when hey refinanced a couple years ago.) But today Matt told me that not only has she verbally abused him since the day they were married 5 years ago, now he is convinced that she's having an affair with the contractor that has completely remodeled her house. He has discovered huge envelopes full of cash hidden in her closet and that he had a GPS monitor put on her car by a private investigator and yesterday the car had gone to a contractors store for 2 minutes then gone to their mountain house for 5 hours, then back to that same store for 2 more minutes and then gone home. A trip that she completely denied. I was floored partly by the allegations but also because I had no idea that the home life of someone that I worked side by side with for almost 10 years was so completely awful. He had been so embarrassed by her incessant accusations of him being a looser that he's hid it all very well.

Clearly, we weren't going to get much done this day so when Matt tells me that he wants to drive up to his mountain house and change the locks on the doors I agree to ride along so we can try to get some work done in the car. However, during the 2 hour trip all he wants to do is purge. He talks nonstop about the most unbelievably flawed relationship I've ever experienced. She has been hateful to him in private while seeming to be a good, even doting wife in public. But the flaunting of the relationship with the contractor, right under Matt's nose was more than he could take. Apparently Matt had come home one afternoon to see the worker leaving the neighborhood and his wife, flustered but sitting in an odd chair, naked except for a robe and wet as if she'd just stepped out of the shower, which apparently they had. And another day where she cooked supper for the contractor and his son, in Matt's own kitchen without inviting Matt to join them... Well, we go by Home Depot, buy 3 new locks and go to the mtn house (in the absolute middle of no where) and proceed to change them. Once that's done, we sit down to rest for a few minutes and I hear someone at the backdoor. The hair on my neck stands straight up as it is dead quiet up there on this freezing cold, clear day - there should be no one trying to get in but through the window I see that its his wife! Matt lets her in and she mumbles something about needing to get a picture upstairs that needs re framing and I see that there is about to be an explosion so I excuse myself and go find a yard chair behind the garage. Its eerily quiet for 15 or 20 minutes, then they start hysterically screaming at each other. I feel like I'm an extra in a horror movie. I have no idea what to do, there's no cell service up there so I can't check my e-mails on my blackberry, I am stuck. The argument eventually spills out into the yard and Matt yells for me to come get in the car, even though when I do, she leans in the window and shrieks some more that she's done nothing wrong, Matt is the sick one etc.. We leave the gravel drive sideways, tires spinning and a ton of dust spun into the air as he aims the car for Atlanta. All the while I'm thinking, oh my God, now what am I (we) going to do?