How to "marry well" in 2026 (and stop dating the wrong people)

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1:29Grace Beverley: what is up i'm grace beverly and welcome back to working hard the podcast shape guidebook on how to improve your own life and achieve what you actually dreamed of doing because life's too short for boring podcasts and bad advice what is up and welcome back to working hard when you choose who you're going to marry or you choose who you're going to be in a long-term relationship with, you are not just choosing your relationship. You are choosing so much more than that. You are choosing your lifestyle, what arguments you're going to have, which different struggles you are going to face. And of course, this is very nuanced and very complex, but I think that so much of women's history has been focused on marrying well and on that looking like a certain thing.

2:12And I think we haven't had enough discussions on what marrying well should now look like. Now so many structural aspects of society have changed. So I wanted to do an episode on marrying well and how to marry well and how to unlearn certain things about relationships and dating in order to be able to get to that point. But before we get into it, I want to be very, very clear that when I say marry well. Firstly, I don't mean marry rich. I don't mean marry impressive or marry a man who looks good on paper. I mean how you can build a relationship that genuinely makes your life better. Something that is based on real compatibility, on mutual respect, on matched effort and matched alignment of the type of life you want to live.

2:57It's not just about those things. You can't just meet someone and think, okay, you're attractive and I like you and therefore amazing. Great. If that aligns in so many other ways, fantastic. But you are choosing so much more than that when you are choosing marriage. And the second thing I want to say, when I'm talking about marrying well, I'm talking about that because I'm using the saying that has been bounded around for a very, very long time in terms of, you know, women being told to marry well. Lots of people choose not to get married. Lots of people have long-term relationships that look like many different things.

3:29What I'm essentially talking about is who you choose to be in a relationship with and whatever that looks like for your life and your future. But I want to talk about how we can do so in a way that sets us up the best we possibly can for the type of life we want to live.

3:41Grace Beverley: But before we get into it, please make sure you're following the podcast wherever you're listening to it on. It takes a lot of work to put these episodes together each week and a follow which takes two seconds is honestly the simplest thing you can do to support us and it also means that a fresh episode lands in your feed every single Monday without you having to think about it or pay a penny.

4:02So let's start with the phrase marrying well. When our grandparents use this phrase I feel like most of the time they meant financially and in terms of social standing. So finding a stable man, a good provider, which we might still talk about but actually provider definitely meant more around finances, around doing certain types of work and holding up the family in a certain way, then probably also a respectable family to some extent. And I think it's important to say that the need to marry well wasn't just cultural pressure. For most women, it was actually a practical necessity. You couldn't open a bank account without a male guarantor in the UK until 1975.

4:40You couldn't get a mortgage in your own name without a husband or a male cosigner. Credit cards, rental agreements, even some employment contracts, all required male authorization. So marriage was the mechanism by which women accessed their financial and legal freedoms. And now, delightfully we are living in quite a different world so women in 2026 are able to buy houses of their own they are running companies they are building investment portfolios they are raising and having children solo by choice the economic argument for marriage has fundamentally changed which has meant that the entire premise of marrying well has to change with it and with that so have the expectations and needs we require from a life partner and yet i don't think we have put nearly enough thought into what that means now.

5:28And truthfully, a lot of us are still operating from an older script when it comes to looking for a partner. And if we don't re-evaluate what marrying well looks like to us, I'm not saying what your mum thinks or what your grandma thinks or whatever it might be. If we don't re-evaluate what marrying well looks like in that sense, then the likelihood is we are going to learn from the previous generations and choose someone based on what would be helpful 30 years ago, 60 years ago, which actually the world has changed so much in so many of these senses. We need to be looking at some other things other than provision and for reasons we are going to come on to.

6:01Grace Beverley: I also don't want to deny that there are still significant financial burdens to singlehood. So whether that is council tax or paying a mortgage and logistical factors like earnings and career paths play a role in every single relationship. But things have definitely changed and I want to talk about how to make a genuinely good decision about who to build a life with if you choose to build a life with a single partner and the things that I personally believe we need to learn about marrying well or choosing a life partner well and how that reflects in dating and how to actually get there. So what does marrying well mean when you don't need a man to access a certain standard of living?

6:39To me this means building a relationship where both people are genuinely better for being in it, where the effort is matched, where the values are aligned and neither person is carrying the whole relationship on their back and I think getting there really required me to rethink how I was showing up in the dating process in the first place. So what I've done for this is I've written down six shifts that I think changed a lot for me when it came to finding a partner and we're going to talk through them. I'd also like to very

7:04Grace Beverley: specifically shout out the TikTok I saw from Ellen Wynn on a similar topic to this. The title was Uncomfortable Things I've Done to Marry Well which really got me thinking about this and made me want to write down a lot of this around my own standards. So I'm going to link that in the description of this episode because I feel like her tips I agree with pretty much everything she said there. So for this episode I'm going to go into my version of six uncomfortable things I did to marry well in 2026 and the reason I did it this way is because I feel like we can only talk from our own experiences when going through something like this.

7:33I want to talk about the really important context in a lot of these points and I think that where we are in 2026 is one of the

7:39Grace Beverley: most important things to have these discussions based on but all I can essentially attest to is how this worked in reality for me. So number one I got really honest about what I actually wanted my life to look like. When you're choosing a relationship, you are not just choosing attraction to someone or sexual attraction or alignment in terms of the fact that you like each other. You are choosing so much more than that. You are choosing what your future life looks like. So before I could actually evaluate anyone else properly, I had to figure out what I actually wanted from a relationship and also my life in general.

8:15Grace Beverley: And I don't mean just saying like I want to find someone kind and funny because that's going to be usually part of everyone's answer. I think it's really important to have a very clear sense of where you stand on the big things because although it doesn't sound very romantic, I firmly believe that when you are choosing a partner, you are choosing the life you want to lead. I was thinking of what these questions should actually be and actually I did write a very specific, like, it wasn't a husband list, it was a boyfriend list, it was quite a long list of the things that I would want in a partner.

8:45Grace Beverley: I think I didn't know so many of them and I was settling for missing a lot of them purely because I hadn't truly encapsulated like and like put on paper exactly what I wanted. I feel like answering these questions will help you get really clear on what you actually want that to look like. So the big questions, things like where do I want to live? Do I want kids? Do I want a partner who is also really ambitious or would I find that exhausting? Do I think that they need to be really happy with playing second fiddle most of the time because I'm super ambitious. Don't get me wrong, you can have two very ambitious people in a relationship, but if you do want kids and you're also super ambitious, someone in the relationship is going to end up compromising something there.

9:23And I think getting clear on that ahead of time is very, very important. Do I value quality time? How do I want conflict to be handled?

9:31Grace Beverley: What does a good weekend actually look like to me? The answers to these questions can and will change, but I think it's very hard to hold people to standards or see if you're actually compatible in a wider sense if you don't actually know what you want from your life. Even a bit of vision boarding for this, even if it's just like writing down vision boarding, will help you. I've recorded episodes on how to make a vision board with Dr. Tara Swart and with Roxy Nafusi. I will link them in the description if you want to do them for your love life specifically and your future. I also think a really important thing to mention when it comes to what do you want your life to look like is the fact that it feels like there's a big disconnect between men and women when talking and thinking about dating at the moment.

10:11And one of the big reasons for this, in my humble opinion, is that this is one of the first generations where women are starting to out-earn men in lots of areas. There is an increased amount of equality in a lot of different areas. No, we haven't reached certain levels yet in some spaces, but there is definitely an increased amount. Women are highly educated.

10:32Grace Beverley: They are wanting to do certain things that in the past would not have been conventional for a woman to do. And I think that that has changed, but I don't necessarily think that what people think men should bring to a relationship in a heterosexual relationship has changed that much. So in the past, the provider role looked like financial provision. We've already talked about it. Financial and status provision, whatever it might be. Whereas if you're looking at two people in their 20s who have very similar salaries, there is no reason the assumption should be that the woman takes on all of the unpaid labour in the household, for example, just because the man is providing.

11:10Grace Beverley: You're both providing. You are both going to work every single day. You both need to go to work every single day. What you want your future to look like is important, what that would look like in terms of that dynamic, but also what you each bring to the table. Because if someone is only bringing their ability to provide financially and you are also doing that and having to do the 20 things on top that are generally considered necessary from women in relationships or women generally, then you are probably going to have a disconnect in terms of what you want your life to look like. So I think that is really important to get to and why so much around marrying well has changed.

11:43Grace Beverley: Number two, I stopped explaining my standards and just started holding them. This is a really important one for me and it links back to something Matthew Hussey said on our episode with him last year. I used to spend enormous energy trying to get people to understand why their behavior wasn't okay for me. So writing long messages, having the same conversation for the fourth time, hoping that if I could just explain it clearly enough that I valued regular communication that something would shift and I think I've realized that explaining to someone why their behavior is a problem for me is a form of labor and it's also a form of hope.

12:21Grace Beverley: The shift I made here was actually letting my actions do the communicating instead. So not giving up my time at the last minute because I've made it very clear I'm not available at the last minute or desperately trying to change someone constantly over and over again and I think the truth is that the people worth keeping always figure it out from your actions because they are emotionally intelligent enough to learn and adapt and overcome and the ones who don't are also giving you the answer that they are not worth investing in anymore and I think we sometimes interpret that the other way we sometimes interpret that in terms of I'm not worth making plans with ahead of time or I'm not worth doing this no that person is not worth investing your time in anymore as it is very clear you have deep incompatibility around how you like to live your lives and that is not always going to be the case.

13:04Sometimes you have different views on something, you communicate it once or

13:07Grace Beverley: twice and it changes. When that doesn't happen and you are saying over and over, I can't do this, I don't put up with this, I don't put up with this, and you are putting up with it, you're the one giving mixed signals because your actions are not aligning with what you say and it's clearly not changing. Number three is that I applied the effort match rule ruthlessly. I've spoken about this a few times now but I think it is 100 % worth repeating as it is my number one dating rule. I am by nature a high effort person. I put a lot into friendships, into work, into relationships, and I have been in situationships and relationships with people who were not.

13:43Grace Beverley: And I kept telling myself that the gap was something that I could bridge if I was patient enough or cool enough or less needy about it. Whereas what I eventually accepted is that a low effort person with a high effort person does not produce a medium effort relationship. It produces one person constantly feeling undervalued and one person constantly feeling like they can't do enough. And I'm not saying either type is wrong. Some people just want a lower key version of a relationship that operates at a certain level and that is so valid. But I know that I'm not one of those people. High effort people need to be with high effort people because the mismatch in expectations in terms of what makes you feel special will make you both miserable in the long run.

14:26Grace Beverley: And since I spoke about this last, I actually looked more into the science behind it too, because that is what we like to do over here. American psychologist John Gottman's research found that couples who last are not the ones with the most chemistry at the start, which I think we know. They are the ones who show effort to each other in ordinary moments. And that requires matched investment and a mutual understanding of what going to an effort looks like.

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16:10Grace Beverley: Number four is that I stopped going along with someone else's pace and started setting my own. So I think this was probably the most uncomfortable shift that I had to make when I was dating. In previous relationships, I had a habit of kind of slotting into whatever the other person seemed to want, moving at their speed, letting their level of enthusiasm set the temperature of the whole thing. And the problem with that is that you end up in a relationship that you didn't consciously choose. You just drifted into it because you kept saying yes. But setting your own pace means being an adult about what you are ready for and trying not to put yourself in situations that get ahead of where you actually are.

16:47Grace Beverley: It's basically about not letting attachment happen passively and then trying to manage the fallout. But instead of this making conscious decisions about who you're investing in rather than waking up six months later more intertwined than you meant to be with someone who hasn't actually shown you that much or who isn't someone you want to be in a long-term relationship with. It can happen both ways. And I think yes on one hand it's sometimes awkward to be the one slowing things down but I think that anyone worth keeping will respect your pace and also communicate what they want to do pace-wise as well.

17:17Grace Beverley: I also think this is really important on the other side. So yes, you might want to be slowing things down. You also might want to speed things up in a way that they don't want. So someone says they're not ready for a relationship. They say they just want to be exclusive rather than calling you their girlfriend. If that is not the pace you want, do not go along with it. And I'm not saying you force them into it. You can walk away. You can say that isn't actually what I want from this and be very clear from it and make your actions very clear. So many of us change our pace based on what the other person is doing.

17:44Grace Beverley: It is a massive people-pleasing tactic and it is not going to end up pleasing anyone, you or them. It is confusing to everyone involved. All of this in terms of pace isn't just about sex, though I think that's often like when you're talking about pace within a relationship, that's often where people's minds go. It's about access to your time, to your energy, to your emotional availability, answering every message the second it comes in or rearranging your plans or always being free, always being warm and available. These are ways of giving someone a level of access that they haven't yet earned.

18:12Grace Beverley: Your time is actually the most finite thing you have and how quickly you hand it over tells someone a lot about how you value yourself. So slowing down is about protecting all of that, not just your sex life. It's about protecting your energy and protecting what you actually want to give people before they've proven to you that they would even go close to giving you the equivalent. Number five was that I started taking people at their word. So when someone tells you early on that they're really bad at texting or they are not in a great place for a relationship right now, that is useful information.

18:43Grace Beverley: To take a point from Ellen's original carousel, she said he is usually offloading the guilt of knowing he is wasting your time and managing your expectations when they are doing this type of thing. I think particularly when you're getting on with someone really well, you're like, yeah, well, I've not been ready for a relationship before and then I've met someone where we have this attraction or connection. Like, of course you would compromise that. It's a very normal and human thing to do, but it is also a way of overriding what someone else has actually quite clearly told you about themselves.

19:08Grace Beverley: And the more straightforward way to think about this is that when someone genuinely likes you and wants things to progress in a certain way, they are not going to open with the reasons why it might not. So when someone does the front load, like the caveats, just take them seriously and see it as them telling you who they are and what they want, because that is what they are doing. And finally, number six, I decided that whatever long-term relationship I was going to be in had to make my life at least twice as good. I remember saying this in a conversation with Sarah Ashcroft in one of our earlier episodes.

19:38Grace Beverley: I believe that your partner should make most area of your life measurably better. A good few of the areas of your life should be two times better. Not perfect because obviously life is going to throw things at everyone and relationships involve conflict and many different difficult things. they are difficult in some ways but in the things that are within your control and within something you are able to label in terms of what you actually want from your life you should be able to point to the ways that your life is bigger more joyful more stable more you because of this person if you are shrinking performing holding your breath waiting to see who they're going to be today that is not a partnership and this wasn't in the plan but i also think it is very important to say that at some point during all of this someone will tell you you are being too picky or you will tell yourself that.

20:21Grace Beverley: The standards are too high, that the list is too long, that you are going to price yourself out of the market. And my honest response to that is that you are not too picky, you are clear. And clarity is a gift to everyone, including the people you don't pursue. Actually, a 2014 study from Northwestern University found that people in relationships where both partners felt they had genuinely chosen each other rather than like defaulted into the relationship out of circumstance or fear of the alternative showed stronger relationship functioning across every measure they tracked. And I know that if you're in the dating trenches or experiencing the single tax or lonely, it is very hard to hear someone say that.

20:59Grace Beverley: I don't think I'd want to necessarily hear that years ago, but I am a firm believer that holding out for genuine compatibility and getting really clear on what that compatibility looks like is one of the biggest acts of self-love you can do. So that is the episode on marrying well in 2026. And I want to say one final thing before I go. None of this is about being cold or too strategic or turning dating into project management. I think the most important thing I did in the lead up to finding my husband was building a life I genuinely loved for myself. A life that a relationship would add to rather than be necessary to complete.

21:34Grace Beverley: And the fact that a lot of women can now choose our partners from a place of desire and want rather than economic necessity is honestly one of the most significant shifts in women's lives in the past century. So don't waste that by settling for someone who makes your life harder or still has these expectations of what a man should do despite the fact that you are also doing a lot of those things as well. And just remember that you are the prize and I don't mean that as a cheesy affirmation. When you genuinely believe that you have something worth protecting, you stop giving it away to people who haven't earned it.

22:07Grace Beverley: Anyway, if you want more, I'll post all of my rules on the Working Hard Instagram this week and we're gonna have a big old dating chat over there. So make sure you're on that side of the internet if you're interested in that type of thing. And otherwise, as always, I will see you next Monday.

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