Why romantic relationships and jobs have so much in common, whether they are good or bad.
Sigmund Freud famously noted that the ultimate definition of normality is the ability to “love and work”.
Although this may sound romantic (he wasn’t), Freud was simply alluding to the fact that adequate psychological functioning should enable people to carry out productive labour, deploying their skills, talents and knowledge to make a valuable contribution to society; and form meaningful long-lasting relationships with significant others.
To be sure, there’s no shortage of people struggling with at least one of these two normality challenges, as well as an abundance of psychotherapists, coaches, and self-help gurus to help them – or at least so they claim.
Moreover, there is seemingly a curious tension between work and love, such that the ability to be successful at one, may decrease our ability to make progress on the other. For example, the career-driven workaholic who is perpetually unwilling to make long-term relationship commitments or becomes an unbearable romantic partner because they are always 100% focused on work; or the individual who makes big big career sacrifices to preserve or invest in their relationship. Could the famous work-life imbalance be largely about work-love tensions?
In fact, the ability to well in the realm of love is not too dissimilar to that required to do well in your career, as there are many clear parallels between love and work. In other words, there are some evident “skills-adjacencies” between the competencies or qualities that help people to excel in a job, and romantic relationships.
Consider that:
(1) The same traits predict both romantic and career success: While the study of work performance is typically orthogonal to that of relationship success, both can be boiled down to the same individual attributes and traits. Most notably, emotional stability, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness to new experiences will enhance both your ability to find and keep the right job, as well as the right partner. A good way to summarize this combination of success predictors in both work and love is as “emotional intelligence” (EQ), and, even when the trait is not objectively useful for improving your actual performance in your career or relationship, it will still boost your subjective appreciation and satisfaction with both. Indeed, the biggest difference between those who are happy and unhappy with their job or relationship is not the inherent quality of their job or relationship, but their own personality, mindset, attitude, and disposition. When times are tough, self-control, resilience, optimism, and grit will help you protect both your career and relationship. Furthermore, contrary to popular opinion, it is not just your EQ, but also your IQ (i.e., learning ability, reasoning capability, and mental horsepower) that significantly increase your chances of both doing well at work and in relationships, not least because it boosts your ability to make rational decisions, understand what the job and your partner want and need, and adopt smart strategies to get what you want. And, like in a job, relationship success are not just about displaying the right traits, but also finding someone who, like a job, is compatible with your own personality and intelligence. For example, you are much more likely to enjoy a long lasting relationship if your romantic partner has a similar level of intelligence to yours; likewise, you will enjoy a longer job tenure if the demands of your job are a good “match” or fit for your intelligence levels. Finally, dark side traits, such as narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism are as destructive in relationships as they are at work, so it is equally advisable to avoid them in both spouses and bosses, even if they charm and captivate us.
(2) Both love and work have “KPIs”: Unless you are married to an HR professional, you probably don’t have a weighted scorecard, with key performance indicators (KPIs) or objective key results (OKRs). However, any romantic relationship will require the daily, monthly, and yearly fulfillment of commonly agreed goals, and include duties and responsibilities for each partner. Just because you are unaware of what your partner expects doesn’t mean you are not expected to fulfill your obligations, from mundane domestic chores, to childcare and parenting duties, to longer term psychological, emotional, and spiritual deliverables (oh, and financial, too). And, like your career progression will dependent on gaining and preserving a positive reputation with your manager, the longevity of your relationship will depend on the reputation you have with your partner. Furthermore, there are both socially agreed parameters to judge a successful career (e.g., salary, seniority, occupational prestige, impact, and job satisfaction) and relationships (e.g., duration, fun, kids, grandkids, passion, and meaningful experiences).
(3) Engagement levels fluctuate in both jobs and relationships: Employee engagement is not that different from relationship “engagement” or involvement, in that our emotional connection with both work and our partner will go up and down, be quite temporally erratic, and reflect varying levels of spiritual, emotional, and psychological commitment. And, just like it would be unrealistic to expect your job to be always fulfilling, meaningful, and motivating, it is naive to expect your partner to be a constant source of joy, happiness, and spiritual fulfillment. Work is not fun all the time; there are transactional, routine, and boring aspects to it; same goes for even the best and most successful of romantic relationships. Moreover, just like employee engagement accounts for only a small portion of actual job performance, your subjective involvement or engagement with your relationship will be largely independent of your actual “performance” (back to point 1), or ability to make your partner (aka boss) happy. Note, too, that just because one person is very happy with their relationship doesn’t mean the other person will be happy, too. In fact, just like employees may have a very different perspective of their own performance at work than their bosses do, you may have a very different perspective on the quality of your relationship than your partner does.
(4) It is not easy to find either a great job or a great partner: Decisions are often irrational when it comes to both making career and relationship choices. Less so when you make the right choices. Impulsive, intuitive, spontaneous career decisions are as likely to result in successes as emotional relationship choices are: just like you shouldn’t randomly quit your job to pivot into a new, arbitrary career, you should probably not marry someone after a first date. In fact, there are rational parameters for predicting whether a job is likely right for you, and the same goes for potential romantic partners. Moreover, there is often a gap between the factors that shape our choices, and those that determine our long-term satisfaction with them. For instance, we pick jobs on the basis of how much they pay, but the ability to do meaningful work, interact with decent and interesting colleagues who value us, and develop useful skills for the future, may all be more strongly related to our career satisfaction. Likewise, physical attractiveness, social rank, and charisma may influence our choice of partner without however boosting our relationship satisfaction down the line. In any area of life there is often a difference between what people want and what they need, to the point that removing them from the decision-making process may actually increase their satisfaction and success later on (this applies as much to work as to relationships).
(5) There is no such thing as a perfect choice: If you are looking for the perfect job or the perfect relationship, you will probably end up unemployed or single, respectively. Not to mention miserable. There are no perfect matches in either the realm of love or careers; just relatively better or worse options. The potential quality of your choices is not so much a function of your actual choices, but your ability to make them work. At work a person’s potential tells only a small part of the story; how they develop and harness it to “make it work” is what matters most. Likewise, there are probably ranges of adequacy when it comes to your love matches, but it’s your motivation and willingness to unlock the relationship’s potential (and your partner’s) that truly counts. Organizations are full of under-performing employees because their motivation makes their typical performance much lower than their maximal performance (what they can do is far greater than what they end up doing on a daily basis). Same with relationships: the cause of their demise is more likely a deficit in motivation rather than ability.
A final consideration: even when work and love play a central role in determining our life satisfaction, and providing some of the foundational fabric to our self-esteem, identity, and character, there is more to life than our jobs and our romantic partner. Unrealistic expectations about work and love will result in irrational levels of demands and pressure on our job and partner to deliver a degree of meaning, fulfillment, and certainty that will likely backfire. Oftentimes, the secret to happiness is to lower our expectations. Needless to say, there are many other important sources of meaning than work or our romantic partner: friendship, community, family, and the pursuit of knowledge and interesting life experiences, all of which may happen independently from our work or partner.