Kings: So… Did anyone go after you recently?
Me: What? No….
Kings: You’re getting old…
Me: Oh, then how?
Kings: Don’t want you. Maybe can find new one in China.
Me: Explain to me again why I bore you a son and heir.
I’m so getting in trouble for writing that…
So Kings and I were both in banking. We avoided each other in the market whenever we could. It was better for our marriage:
“Why is your price taking so long? If I were (dealing for) HSBC it wouldn’t take so long”
“That’s a stupid question (about some investment product structure), you should know the answer.”
“Would you tell HSBC they asked a stupid question?”
“So what, you can freaking whip up a hairy structure price for HSBC in under 20 minutes but you take so freaking long when it’s your wife?”
See?
Honey get your boxing gloves on…
And we hung up on each other a lot during work hours. Not out of anger, more like “busy, can’t talk.” But yes, once in awhile, we might have fought over the Bloomberg. Somewhere in an old Bloomie server are transcripts. <Shudder>.
But difficult situations helped us work out some of the finer points of our marriage contract:
Something-something – love is not self-seeking. Etc etc is not jealous. Something – something else – not easily angered.
Even though I was covering Northasia relationship managers (I priced and executed derivatives in the market for the guys who sell them to rich people) and he was predominantly covering guys like me in Southeastasia, not to mention we were further segregated by asset class (I do more equity derivatives, he does more interest rate and credit) it’s a small market.
Sometimes, people who slapped me around at work would be his clients.
Sometimes, people who could kill him in the dealing room just for the pleasure of watching him die were the sweetest of market counterparts to me.
As a woman, a girlfriend, a wife, it wasn’t easy when someone who’d been a real bitch to me in the office then summoned my husband to drinks or dinner, as his client. One of them almost stripped me of my entire portfolio thru her politicking during a merger – but she loved dealing with Kings in the market.
In sick, sick irony, had she succeeded in stripping me, it would probably have greatly benefitted Kings’ bottom line because she would execute (what was originally my) portfolio trades thru Kings.
(Whereas I wouldn’t – we vowed early on never to face each other in the market. We were so Emily Post about it if we found ourselves facing each other because people were off sick, either of us passed the trade to a colleague after deciding quickly which of us needed the trade more. Then in particular was a good lesson to us not to keep score.)
We know another couple who went about their interbank romance a completely different way. He was married to someone else who was pregnant at the time. She had grown close to him thru many work dealings and was diverting her teammates’ large trades his way.
(Technically not a compliance issue because the trade still goes to the best price, HK law is very strict about that for equity derivatives flow trades. But his simply being allowed to view and match all our other counterparts’ best prices would really piss other counterparts off – no counterpart continually makes prices for no trades, they have other things to do. Like check their eBay bids.)
I was one of her teammates. I fought her with everything I had. It was a spectacular lion fight. She had been there much, much longer than I, the newest member on a team most of whom openly admitted they couldn’t stand her.
Eventually we both quit – I for a new job with 15% salary increment and more senior rank, she permanently out of the market to run a business with (allegedly) her boyfriend’s financial help. After a rocky time they eventually married.
It’s possible some people might find this story terribly romantic.
Her new husband vowed never to have me as his client.
I’m not in the freaking least bit sorry.
ANYWAY, almost 8 years dating or married in a godless environment. Like Refiner’s Fire, the heat helps us work all the rubbish out. We’ve had to practice setting our personal feelings aside for the job.
We’ve had to work at compromising and being honest – not only with each other but also with ourselves, because we often make our decisions based on who is less likely to suffer a casualty having to be the magnanimous one. And we really, REALLY have to not keep score.
We each kinda figured if we loved the other we wouldn’t let them screw up their job. Then we each kinda figured we wouldn’t let the job screw us up.
So we’re a team. There are different positions on a team. Some run defense, some run offense, but you have to always identify when it’s time to pass the ball so the person most wide-open gets a chance to score. We’re constantly in training.
It still freaks people out a bit sometimes how we talk to each other.
Kings: Yeah, you’re getting fat (when I was pregnant).
Me: I always wonder about my taste (on why I married him).
~6 months preggers at Petrus
