If Work Were a Romantic Relationship, Would You Stay?

Oct 9

8 min read

Imagine a friend came to you and described their romantic relationship like this:

They expect me to be available whenever they need me, even when it means neglecting other people I love.
I've learned to ignore when I'm hungry, exhausted, sick, or overwhelmed because they need me to keep going.
They praise and reward me when I sacrifice my health, my needs, and my relationships to make them happy.
I have to ask permission to take time for myself, and I feel guilty when I do.
No matter how much I give, it's never enough. There's always something more they want from me.
I've become so consumed with being wanted and valued by them that I've forgotten who I am outside of this relationship.
I'm afraid that if I start setting boundaries, I'll lose everything we've built together.
I know this relationship is hurting me, but I'm afraid I can't survive without it.
And when I tell them how much this relationship is hurting me, somehow the conversation always comes back to what I need to do differently.

What would you tell them?

Would you call this a healthy relationship?

Would you tell them they needed better time management? More resilience? A meditation practice? A mental health day and then to get right back to it?

Or would you wonder why they were in a relationship that demanded so much of them while giving so little consideration to their wellbeing?

And yet, for a lot of us, this is a pretty good description of our relationship with work.

We just use different words for it.

We call it dedication.

Professionalism.

Ambition.

A strong work ethic.

Being a team player.

exhausted woman sitting at computer late at night

When did work become the center of our lives?

Work is obviously necessary. Most of us need money to live, and work is how we get it.

But in America, work has become much more than an economic exchange.

It has become one of the primary ways we understand who we are.

Think about how quickly we ask someone we've just met: “What do you do?”

We're not usually asking what they do for fun. Or who they love. Or what they're curious about. Or what makes them feel alive.

We're asking what they do for work.

And we believe the answer tells us something meaningful about who they are.

So how did work get this starring role in our lives?

There isn't one simple explanation. But American culture has deep roots in the Protestant work ethic and Puritan ideas that connected hard work, discipline, and productivity with virtue, and idleness with moral failure.

Capitalism reinforced the centrality of work in another way: most of us have to sell our labor in order to access the things we need to survive.

And in the United States, we've tied even more of our security to employment. Work doesn't just pay for our food and housing. For many of us, our jobs determine whether we have health insurance, paid leave, retirement savings, and enough financial security to weather an emergency.

So our relationship with work isn't entirely voluntary.

Our survival is tied to it.

It’s worth remembering that this arrangement isn’t a law of nature.

Human societies have organized the relationship between work, resources, and survival in many different ways. Even within modern capitalist countries, there are enormous differences in how much access to healthcare, housing, childcare, education, retirement, and other basic needs depends upon an individual's employment.

We could organize ourselves around a different premise: that some of the basic conditions required for human life are things we provide for one another collectively, rather than things each person must continually earn through their labor.

Imagine how that might change our relationship with work.

If losing your job didn't also threaten your healthcare, housing, food, or ability to care for your family, work would still matter. We'd still need people to contribute to the functioning of society. We'd still create and build and teach and heal and solve problems.

But we'd have more freedom to ask:

Is this relationship with work actually working for me?

And we'd have more power to walk away when the answer is no.

Sometimes compliance is a survival strategy.

And somewhere along the way, the economic necessity of work became tangled up with something deeper: the belief that working hard makes us good.

The beliefs we carry about work

Work has become intertwined with identity, status, purpose, belonging, achievement, self-esteem, and even morality.

Underneath that are messages many of us have absorbed so thoroughly that we barely recognize them as beliefs:

Hard work is virtuous.
Being busy means you're important.
Successful people work harder.
More responsibility, money, and advancement are signs that you're doing life correctly.
You should always be progressing.
If you have more capacity, you should use it.
Rest is something you earn after the work is done.
A good employee goes above and beyond.
You should be grateful to have a job.
If you love your work, you should be willing to sacrifice for it.
And if you're struggling to keep up, the solution is to become better at managing yourself.

So we learn to override ourselves in service of work.

Hungry? Finish the meeting.

Exhausted? Have some coffee.

Sick? Maybe you can work from home.

Overwhelmed? Become more efficient.

Need a vacation? Make sure you're still reachable.

Burned out? Take a wellness day and come back to the same conditions that burned you out.

Somewhere along the way, we accepted the idea that our bodies should adapt to the demands of work, rather than work being designed around the realities of being human.

And it's hurting us

The numbers reflect the relationship we've created.

In the American Psychological Association's 2023 Work in America survey, 77% of workers reported experiencing work-related stress in the previous month. Nearly a third reported emotional exhaustion. Others described losing motivation, wanting to isolate themselves, feeling ineffective, becoming irritable or angry, and wanting to quit.¹

Even when rest is technically available to us, many of us don't take it.

According to Pew Research Center, 46% of U.S. workers who receive paid time off don't use all of it. Among those who leave time on the table, nearly half say they worry they'll fall behind at work, while 43% say they feel bad about their coworkers having to take on additional work. Some even worry that taking their allotted time off could hurt their chances of advancement or cost them their job.²

Think about that for a moment.

The workplace says: You're entitled to rest.

The culture says: But there might be consequences if you actually take it.

Our bodies are keeping score of a relationship our culture keeps telling us is normal.

The relationship isn't reciprocal

There's something else about our relationship with work that I don't think we talk about enough.

Employment is, fundamentally, an exchange.

I give you my labor, skills, creativity, attention, experience and a portion of my finite life.

You give me compensation and working conditions that make that exchange worthwhile.

But we've layered something else onto that exchange.

Workers are often expected to care deeply.

To be passionate.

To demonstrate commitment.

To go above and beyond.

To be flexible.

To identify with the mission.

To treat organizational priorities as personally meaningful.

To be loyal.

Meanwhile, organizations retain the right to restructure, eliminate positions, freeze salaries, change leadership, increase workloads, or lay people off when business conditions demand it.

In other words:

Organizations are allowed to treat employment as a business relationship.

Workers are often expected to treat it as a devotion.

That's not reciprocity.

And I want to be clear: I don't think the answer is simply that individual workers need to get better at setting boundaries.

Boundaries matter. But boundaries exist within systems.

If saying no threatens your ability to pay rent, access healthcare, feed your family, keep your job, or advance in your career, then “just set better boundaries” isn't a meaningful solution.

We have to be able to talk about both things at once:

How we personally relate to work and the conditions that shape how much freedom we actually have within that relationship.

What if work took its rightful place?

I'm not anti-work.

I actually believe work can be incredibly meaningful.

It can give us opportunities to create, contribute, learn, solve problems, build relationships, develop mastery, serve our communities, and make things better.

Some people genuinely love their work. Their careers are one of the great passions of their lives.

That's beautiful.

But work can matter enormously without needing to be everything.

What if, instead of organizing our lives around work, we organized our work around our lives?

What if we started with a different question:

What makes a human life worth living?

Maybe it's love.

Friendship.

Health.

Community.

Play.

Rest.

Creativity.

Nature.

Learning.

Pleasure.

Spirituality.

Contribution.

Care.

Adventure.

Belonging.

And yes, maybe meaningful work is on that list too.

Then we could ask:

What role do I want work to play in supporting that life?

For one person, work might be a calling.

For another, it might provide money, structure, and connection while the deepest sources of meaning in their life exist somewhere else.

Neither is more evolved.

Neither is more ambitious.

Neither is doing life better.

They're simply different relationships with work.

What would a healthy relationship with work actually look like?

Maybe a healthy relationship with work means:

Work is one expression of who I am, not the definition of who I am.
My worth isn't contingent on my productivity.
My body doesn't have to continually override its needs in order for me to succeed.
Rest isn't something I have to earn.
Boundaries aren't evidence that I don't care.
“Enough” is a legitimate destination.
Success doesn't automatically mean advancement.
My employer gets an agreed-upon portion of my time and energy, not unlimited access to me.
I am allowed to care deeply about my work without giving it everything I have.
My work contributes something meaningful to my life—whether that's purpose, money, community, creativity, stability, learning, or something else.
And when the relationship stops working for me, I'm allowed to question the relationship instead of immediately assuming that I'm the problem.

Maybe that's the shift we need.

Not from caring about work to not caring about it.

Not from ambition to apathy.

Not from working hard to doing the bare minimum.

But from work as the organizing principle of our lives to life as the organizing principle and work as one part of it.

Because maybe the most important career question isn't:

What should I do for work?

Or even:

What work fits who I really am?

Maybe it's:

What kind of life am I trying to build, and what relationship with work would allow that life to exist?

A note about relationship safety: This blog uses the dynamics of unhealthy personal relationships as a metaphor for our relationship with work. If any of the descriptions resonated with you in the context of an intimate relationship, you deserve support, too. The National Domestic Violence Hotline offers free, confidential support, whether you're experiencing abuse yourself or simply questioning whether a relationship is healthy. You can also call 800-799-SAFE (7233) or text START to 88788.

Want to keep exploring?

If something here resonated, there are a few ways we can stay connected:

Stay in the conversation. Subscribe to my newsletter for reflections, practices, and resources on self-connection, navigating change, and building a life that actually feels like yours. Subscribe →

Get curious about your own self-connection. Take the free Self-Connection Check-In to explore where you are right now with self-awareness, self-acceptance, and self-trust — and get a personalized report to help you understand where you might want to focus next. Take the free Self-Connection Check-In →

Get some support. If you’re feeling stuck, disconnected from yourself, or unsure what you want next, schedule a free Clarity Call. We’ll talk about where you are, where you want to go, and whether coaching together might be a good fit. Schedule a Clarity Call →

Sources

1. American Psychological Association, 2023 Work in America Survey: Workplaces as Engines of Psychological Health and Well-Being. APA reported that 77% of surveyed workers experienced work-related stress in the previous month; 31% reported emotional exhaustion, 26% reduced motivation, 25% a desire to keep to themselves, 23% a desire to quit, 19% irritability or anger, and 18% feelings of ineffectiveness.

2. Pew Research Center, “More Than 4 in 10 U.S. Workers Don't Take All Their Paid Time Off,” 2023. Among U.S. workers whose employers offer PTO, 46% reported taking less than they were offered. Among those workers, 49% cited worry about falling behind and 43% feeling bad about coworkers taking on additional work.