Are you married to your job?

Jet, Nov 10, 2003 by Clarence Waldron

You work long hours, even when you don't have to. You call your office when you are on vacation. Or you probably don't even take vacation at all.

Your best friends--and possibly your only friends--are on the job.

Your whole world evolves around your work. When you talk to your family, it's always about work, work, work. What happened on the job, what project you are working on, etc.

You tend to do nothing outside of work. You have no hobbies, no real friends, there's nothing you feel more passionately about than your job.

If this sounds a lot like you, then you might as well face it, you are married to your job.

Experts point out that there's a number of Americans who have become attached to their job. Their work is their identity. Their work is their life. Their job is all they know and all they do.

JET contacted several experts to find out what makes some people divorce their personal life and marry their jobs, and what they should do to strike a balance between work and home.

Experts point out that they are not talking about a single parent who works two jobs to make ends meet or someone who is making minimum wage and needs to work overtime. They are talking about people who have choices in their work habits, who choose somehow, for some reason, to devote their entire lives to their jobs. They choose money and job travel over spending time with family and friends.

Dr. Harvette Grey, immediate past president of the National Association of Black Psychologists, believes that being married to a job is emotionally unhealthy. "If you are doing a good job on the job, that's good, but to really do a good job, you have to have something other than work. We all want to make money, but not at the expense of relationships."

She points out, "I watch some of my friends who are always checking their job voice mail from home. Even when they are on vacation, their phone rings, and that takes them away from enjoying themselves. But they feel needed. When someone is married to his job, he has control over his destiny. It says, 'Look, all these people from the job depend on me. I am calling the shots."

She adds, "We use work as a substitute for human contact. We should be able to have friends who are outside of work. And we should feel fulfilled outside of the job. There's something wrong when people feel lonely outside the job."

She notes that some people take pride in not taking vacation days. "But you should ask yourself, 'If this was your last day on earth, would you say, 'I accomplished a lot. I didn't take all of my vacation days?' No, you will probably be more concerned about the friendships you developed, your family and the love you shared. It's the little things in life that really matters."

Grey believes, "When someone is malted to his job, it may start as 'I am going to work myself to the top,' but it turns into 'all about me and work.' It becomes, 'I am not going to share myself with my family. I am not going to share myself with myself and do something that I love to do because I have power in another arena, my job.'"

Dr. Carl C. Bell, president and CEO of Community Mental Health Council in Chicago, says some people become wedded to their job because it gives them" a purpose, a clear direction in which to take their lives."

He points, "There are some people who marry their jobs because they do not like who they are married to at home, and that is a problem, but just because a person is married to his job does not mean that he is running away from something at home--he could just love his job. It is a great thing if you are in a job and you are "winning" or doing a good job. One of the useful things that Freud delineated was that love and work were the critically two most important things in life."

Striking a balance between work and your personal life can be challenging, the experts agree.

Bell explains, "The answer is rather simple and straightforward, but being that easy makes it hard for people to do. You simply have to be aware that it is critically important to have a balance between work and your personal life, and, accordingly, you actually have to WORK to achieve the balance. A lot of people make the mistake of thinking the balance will just BE without having to work on it to cultivate it."

Bell, who also is professor of psychiatry and public health at the University of Illinois at Chicago, notes, "The balance between the two is important as one puts the other in perspective and vice versa. The trouble is that too many people do not try to strike a balance, or their personal life sucks, so they use work to avoid it. Of course, then you have people who are not doing well at their personal life or their work. I suppose there are also people who really enjoy their personal life and just work to be able to afford whatever comforts they need in their personal life--so for them it is just work. For me, I want to do both of them to death--enjoy my personal life and enjoy my work life. Otherwise what is the point? Why do anything halfway?"