Are these 4 issues causing problems in your relationship?
This week, my husband and I probably wasted a total of ten hours of our lives dealing with various companies who’s agents weren’t able to help us. One for overbilling, one for backorders, one for a repair.
Each time we would call we would be transferred. Then told we’d be called back. Then e-mailed. Then suddenly e-mailed by someone else who had no idea the backstory. You’ve likely experienced similar maddening events.
And while these companies were keeping our money, making massive profits, and likely underpaying their call center staff, my husband and I were often fighting in our kitchen - “can you just get off the phone now!? It’s time for dinner! Give it up!”
“I’m not giving it up! I have been on the phone for 2 hours now!” he’d respond.
We love each other, have good communication, and a strong relationship, however the stress of dealing with serious corporate gaslighting is enough to make anyone lose it. If you were to zoom out from my home and hover atop the offices at A Better Life Therapy, you would hear couples arguing about issues similar to this one
When I meet people on an airplane and I tell them what I do one of the most common questions I receive is “why do most couples come to therapy?”
My answer often surprises them. Most people assume people are coming because of some big indiscretion - an affair, an uncovered lie. And, yes, people do come after betrayal.
But, that isn’t the biggest reason couple after couple joins me on the couch or from hours away on their computer screens.
Most couples are attending sessions because they are wildly overwhelmed with stress and pressures from the outside world, even if that isn’t how they would initially describe the problem.
Here are a few examples of what their arguments sound like:
A. “You never help with the kids!”
B “What do you mean I don’t help with the kids? Do you think I wanted to be stuck on a phone call for 45 minutes?”
A. “You dont understand how much I do all day! It took me three hours just to figure out how to schedule Vera’s surgery!”
B. Well I don’t understand why you chose that doctor then just find a new one!
A. “Are you kidding me? Try finding a new surgical center that our insurance will cover. I dare you.”
A. “We used to have so much sex when we first met. Now you never even touch me”.
B. “I can’t believe you’d even talk about sex right now when you know I just spent the entire day dealing with my completely unreasonable boss”.
Individuals are exhausted and it shows in the way they manage their relationships. When I work with couples it can help to guide them towards identifying how stressors are playing a role in their life so that they can begin to attack the pressures rather than each other.
4 common (but not often discussed) stressors wreaking havoc:
While you might already know that the stress that comes along with managing money together, dealing with each other in sickness and health, and managing in-law relationships can bring conflict into even the strongest relationships, there are some less commonly discussed stressors that have been exacerbated in the last few years.
Invasive Workplaces - People are working 24 hours a day and not being paid for it. This is creating exhaustion and overwhelm and little time for each other.
Abusive Consumer Practices - Like the stress felt by my husband and I in my opening story, endless phone calls, junk fees, and deception are wasting people’s time, money, and energy and have us turning on each other rather than the real culprit.
Keeping Up With The Joneses - People are spending money and time they don’t have on things they don’t need (but think they do). The immense pressure that comes along with being perfect parents, perfect homemakers, perfect workers, perfect (insert whatever here) is causing more problems in relationships than you might think.
Lay-offs (or the fear of them) - Lay-offs are everything and they are impacting the way that people interact with work. The fear that one will be laid off can create scenarios where they have less boundaries with work or where their nervous systems are so fried from fear of losing their job that they struggle to regulate at home.
In today’s letter, I am going to briefly examine the first issue on this list, invasive workplaces, and give you three first steps to changing how they impact your relationship with the people you love.
Invasive Workplaces
In the history of work, there have always been people who struggled with the management of boundaries between themselves and their employment. As a child, I remember my dad walking in far past 9PM from a day at the office and immediately hopping onto the corded phone in our kitchen to make just one last call to a client.
This, of course, wasn’t good for his own mental health or his ability to be a part of family life.
I have seen this issue become exacerbated since 2020. Partly because it’s a little more insidious. While people might no be walking through the door at 9 PM, because they didn’t leave the house in the first place, they are linked to their workplaces in an almost 24 hour work cycle shift.
There is a false sense of having more freedom from work. And sure, while people might be able to run to the grocery store mid day (another conversation for how this impacting women at work and at home) or work from their favorite coffee shop, they are also answering e-mails during their child’s recital, running up to their makeshift closet offices after dinner to respond to Slack messages, and spending the weekends glued to their laptops.
But this doesn’t just go for “work from homers”. Those that work out of the home - teachers, doctors, and so forth - are doing more work than ever before because of how simple it can be to take it home with them due to the availability of “use it anywhere” technology”.
The couples I work with often come into the office pointing fingers at each other - “you’re always on your phone!”, “you never hang out with me after the kids go to bed”but by the time we've done our work together they find a way to come together to create better boundaries against the deluge of workplace invasiveness taking over their lives.
Relate? Here is what you can do:
Understand the concept of “thirds”: In Dr. Stan Tatkin’s work he discusses the concept of “thirds”. Thirds are anything that sucks energy from our relationships - this could be friends that gossip about our partner’s, spending too much money on certain habits, spending too much time at work, putting all of our focus on hobbies, etc. In healthy relationships, we pay attention to how outside influences are taking energy away from our partners and families and we work hard to protect the energy we need to make our relationships a success. Understand, together, that work is a “third” and that if it’s managed incorrectly it will drain the good stuff between you and your partner.
Make a commitment to change: If you notice that work is getting between you and your loved ones, the first commitment you need to make is that you are going to change the way you allow it to intervene in your life. You have to decide that your Slack messages don’t own you. That the e-mail can wait. That you are not being paid for a 24 hour work cycle. I recognize this is hard and could likely have consequences. The fear of consequences is often what keeps us in unhappy situations. Change doesn’t happen over night, but your commitment towards doing it can help you to plan for less painful consequences and process how you’ll manage associated challenges.
Create “no work” times: Work with your partner to create a schedule that makes it clear when the door on work time closes. Do you promise each other that after dinner, no matter what, work is off limits? Or perhaps that on the weekends between certain hours there will be no lifting the lid of the laptop?
These three points can work as a starting point to changing your relationship with work so you can improve your relationship with each other.
I will continue to break down how the other issues seem to be influencing the couples I work with in my next letter.
Until then, here is the TL:DR:
When couples come to therapy they often start from a place of attacking each other in regards to their pain. For many couples, though, the pain is the result of overly stressful lives. In those situations, the goal of the couple is to become a united front against the stress.
Stress has always been a major factor in conflict, however there are issues causing stress that I have seen exacerbated since 2020. This list is not exhaustive, however four of the issues that come up again and again are the impact of invasive workplaces, abusive consumer practices, keeping up with the Joneses, and fears around layoffs/impact of layoffs.
In this letter, I offer 3 ways to begin to manage the impact of workplace invasiveness. In future letters, I will continue to explore the other issues I listed as well.
As people learn to identify these stressors they can begin to change them and their impact.
Further Reading
Wired for Love by Dr. Stan Tatkin
If you notice that stress is getting between you and your loved ones, Dr. Tatkin’s book Wired for Love might help. In Wired for Love, Tatkin talks about the necessary components of building a secure functioning relationship. The more secure your relationship the more you’ll be able to manage stress together.
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The four stressors... Lay-offs (and the fear of them)....
Yeah. Instant subscribe! Will patiently wait for the next parts.