Are You Married to Your Work or to Your Spouse?

 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."
Dr. Grey, who is also executive director of the Cultural Center at DePaul University in Chicago, notes that the first step to getting that balance is serf-awareness: You must realize that you have married your job and divorced yourself from your personal life. "You have to realize that the job has become the place that you call home and family. That you actually feel guilty when you can't get to work. You are afraid of leaving your job, because this is your family."
You should start developing hobbies, join a fraternity or sorority, become active in church or volunteer in the community. "Develop relationships, connect with people who like to do those things. Go back to the relationships that you may have ignored, like your family and friends. Slowly start do things outside of the job. Take that vacation you have been putting off. Take the kids somewhere. And cut off that cell phone."
Dr. Ronn Elmore, northern California relationship therapist and author of How To Love A Black Man, states: "Become very deliberate about working hard and working well when it's work time, then be willing to put work down and focus just as passionately on the other aspect of your life--especially personal relationships--when it's time for that. Commit to doing so, no matter what. It may mean you run the risk of not becoming quite as rich or famous as you might have by being obsessed with the job, but it helps maintain balance. Otherwise highly productive people can become miserable, lonely, highly productive people."
Emphasizing the importance of striking a balance with your professional and personal lives, Dr. Grey quotes Anna Quindlen's inspirational best-seller, A Short Guide To A Happy Life. "I like what Quindlen says: "'Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work ... The second is only a part of the first ... Get a life. A real life.'"


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Seun Banjo-Trueleverage
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