My family is still at the camp that as marriage is one of the most important decisions you’ll ever make, they’d rather that we be single than marry the wrong person, grandkids or not.

I’ve actually seen how marriage can make/break a person.

We have two suppliers in Xiamen: one for wiper, and the other one for cookies.

The one for cookies was ran by a couple who met when the guy was poor and just starting out. He was actually from a good family, but lost their riches post the Cultural Revolution. He lived in the woman’s family apartment as a baker, penniless as a mouse. They got married, slowly built up their empire together, and are now one of the richer families in Xiamen, well loved by their people, well respected by their community. Their three daughters I’ve met, and all well behaved and bred.

He is in charge of production and sales, while the woman helps him out with customer relationship and taking his guests out for dinner (e.g., they can meet two groups per evening instead of just one), in addition to making the business more “human” by launching charity activities and events that make the workplace more “family-like” (e.g., having weekend Buddhist Sunday school for workers’ kids). Up till today, they’re still very sweet. They’ve built up their business together, intertwined their lives together, so that there’s never a conflict between family and business.

The other wiper lao ban started out as an engineer, launched his own business, and through continuous capital investment and R&D, became one of the best and largest wiper suppliers in China. No BS type of guy.

His wife stays at home and takes care of their 7-year old son. Very uninvolved in business and quite demanding. When we were having meeting, he was lamenting that his wife was complaining that their 7-year old son was already “too much work” and she wanted him to be sent out to boarding school. Quite distracted the meeting because of problems at home. Given he doesn’t show off his feelings, the fact that he actually shared this tidbit with us, his Philippines supplier, probably meant that he was already quite frustrated at home.

It’s amazing as to how two different businessmen could have their businesses and state of minds affected by their respective spouses and marriages. Iba talaga e, if you have your family affairs in order, you really could focus more on other aspect of your lives, empowering you to achieve more. But if magulo sa bahay, it really pulls everything down.

Hence, though I can never really guarantee that mine wouldn’t be the same as the second guy (one can never really know), I do really believe that the first guy’s marriage would be quite ideal, and if ever, I would want mine to just be like his.

How about yours? What type of marriage would you like to have?