Is Work Stress Sabotaging Your Relationships? | Dr. Alexandra Solomon

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Speaker 3 Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. Today we have one of our all-time favorite guests, wise, just buckets of wisdom, but also compassion and goodness and juiciness.

Speaker 2 Dr.

Speaker 2 Alexandra Solomon is internationally recognized as one of today's most trusted voices in the world of relationships, and her framework of relational self-awareness has reached millions of people around the globe.

Speaker 2 A licensed clinical psychologist in private practice, couples therapist, speaker, author, and professor, Dr.

Speaker 2 Alexandra Solomon is passionate about translating cutting-edge research and clinical wisdom into practical tools people can use to bring awareness about what the hell, Curiosity and authenticity to their relationships.

Speaker 2 She is the host of the Reimagining Love podcast and author of Love Every Day, Taking Sexy Back, How to Own Your Sexuality and Create Relationships You Want, and Loving Bravely, 20 Lessons of Self-Discovery to Help You Get the Love You Want.

Speaker 2 She is also a friend of the pod. Thank you for being here, Dr.
Solomon.

Speaker 3 And now, sister is going to tell us what the hell we're talking about today.

Speaker 4 Go.

Speaker 2 Okay, here we go. Dr.
Solomon came back because we need her apparently every week to help us. And what we're talking about today is something that

Speaker 2 all the studies show is one of the

Speaker 2 most cited reasons for marital conflict.

Speaker 2 And that is

Speaker 1 career work

Speaker 2 issues.

Speaker 2 The way that takes place in your relationship so if you feel like your partner's work is killing your relationship if they keep telling you your career is sabotaging the marriage whatever it is if you have ambitions outside the home how does it affect the intimacy inside the home

Speaker 2 this is a tale as old as time dr solomon

Speaker 2 tell us what's happening What do you see out in the therapy world of what is happening with this?

Speaker 3 Yeah, and what's the presenting symptoms? Like two people sit down in a room with you. What do they do?

Speaker 1 A couple walks into a bar.

Speaker 4 A couple.

Speaker 4 They flop down on the couch. A lot of times it shows up the way that you're describing it, Amanda.
It's like they're working too many hours. There's no boundary between work and home.

Speaker 4 Why aren't they trying to do more with their careers? Oftentimes it's what we call like the suffering Olympics, like whose job sucks more? Who's trying harder?

Speaker 4 Who's got so this kind of like back and forth, like cross complaining.

Speaker 4 But I want to make sure that we acknowledge like right off the bat that the heart of my work in this area is not analyzing like the macro, like there are macro systems that create, right, deep inequality.

Speaker 4 Income inequality is real. Unfair, unsafe, unsound working conditions are real.
So I want us to have this conversation like kind of inside of that, which is hard, right?

Speaker 4 Because it feels there's a layer of privilege here to talk about the intersection of family of origin dynamics and our internal stuff and our relational stuff that all gets activated around work in a way that I don't think we're talking nearly enough about.

Speaker 4 So I'm excited to talk about that, but it feels real important to acknowledge the backdrop of which is that lots of facets of work are, there's baked in, you know, unfairness and oppression baked into the system as well.

Speaker 2 It's such an important point because if you are a black woman coming home from work every day and you have the baseline level of stress of being a professional overworked person and then you are also bearing at the same time the stress of knowing that you've just had 13 microaggressions you were passed over for a promotion you're getting paid you know two-thirds of what the white dude at the top is being paid that is a significantly increased amount of stress to bring home to the family unit.

Speaker 3 That's a real impact.

Speaker 1 That's a real impact.

Speaker 4 That's a a real impact. There's so much research that shows that the arrow goes in both directions.
Work stress comes home when conditions are unfair, stressful, da-da-da.

Speaker 4 That comes home and plays out and impacts relational dynamic. But then also it goes the other way, too.
When there are problems at home, those travel with us into the workplace.

Speaker 4 There's a study that found that, like, when a member of a team is going through a divorce, you know, the team's productivity drops by X percent, because of course, right?

Speaker 4 When we're not in our best place personally, that's going to affect how we show up. So the arrow goes in both directions.
And

Speaker 4 our feelings about work and how we show up at work, we bring ourselves with us, you know, we bring our patterns, our tendencies, our old wounds to work with us. And that shapes, right?

Speaker 4 So yes, there are microaggressions, there are unfair practices. And there's the us variable, you know, the way that we feel like we have to be, the way that we're afraid to be.

Speaker 4 I talk a lot about how our family is a system. We grow up in this family system.
Okay.

Speaker 4 But what else is a system? The workplace is a system.

Speaker 4 And so I invite people to think about, you know, the feelings that you have about your boss or your supervisor oftentimes will activate and replicate the feelings you had about your parent.

Speaker 4 That's about how you feel vis-a-vis an authority. The feelings you have about your colleagues are going to activate your sibling dynamics.

Speaker 3 Unless you're really complicated and you just only work with your wife and your sister.

Speaker 4 Consider yourself activated. That's right.
That's right.

Speaker 4 And then when you become a leader in your field, when you become a supervisor, when you become a boss, okay, well, now you have this massive reckoning with power, right?

Speaker 4 And you are going to be triggered around the ways in which you saw power be like you now are sort of like the parent of the family you know and you have people reporting to you there's caregiving there's favoritism i think there are ways in which we would do well for ourselves to sort of map onto our workplaces

Speaker 4 old stuff and old patterns that have to do with how we felt when we were little in our family system I've never thought of that.

Speaker 2 And even like how you try to get appreciation and attention and validation in the workplace or like why it feels so absolutely extreme and vital to some people, and why people are like, My boss doesn't like me, and I don't give a shit.

Speaker 2 Is that like family of origin stuff where you're like so desperate for people to affirm you

Speaker 3 or not? Sissy, did you just say you've never thought about?

Speaker 3 I just have to stop.

Speaker 2 No, I just, I'm thinking of my like my law firm stuff. I've clearly thought about family and the dynamic of this, but I'm picturing like going to my

Speaker 3 I read that you have types of couples that come into your offices. What are these types?

Speaker 3 And when it comes to like family systems who are thinking one of our biggest issues is career, like what do they mean?

Speaker 3 What are these types of couples that, okay, how will the pod squatters find themselves in this?

Speaker 4 I've sort of laid out three different types of couples. One couple is like the slasher and the traditionalist.

Speaker 4 So the slasher is the person who is an artist/slash coach slash yoga instructor.

Speaker 3 Oh, slash.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 4 Their job has a few different elements to it.

Speaker 4 And then the traditionalist, you know, they have one paycheck from one company. They do one thing.
They are a lawyer. They are, you know, a teacher.
They are a nurse. Like that is their one job.

Speaker 4 And I think when a couple is partnered across that difference, there are opportunities for misunderstanding, tension, polarization.

Speaker 2 Resentment.

Speaker 2 Is that a big one? Yes. Okay.

Speaker 4 That's what I, you know, when we're talking about these dynamics around work and intimacy, it is so often like the side effect of tension poorly managed is resentment.

Speaker 4 Resentment and feeling deeply misunderstood and unappreciated.

Speaker 1 Tension poorly managed. Tension poorly managed is resentment.
That's good. Okay.

Speaker 3 Yes, it is. Dr.
Solomon.

Speaker 2 Double click. That's good.

Speaker 4 Up vote.

Speaker 2 Okay. And what's the second group?

Speaker 4 So the second group are the coaster climber

Speaker 4 couple. So here we have somebody who's like, they're doing their thing.
They've got their job. They're coasting.
They're really content. with the work they're doing, the way they're doing it.

Speaker 4 They're fine.

Speaker 4 And the climber is that person who, when they get the promotion, they maybe take one breath, have one sip of champagne and then they're figuring out what the next one is and the coaster and climber there's beauty in both ways of being right there's beauty and just having a job that you do and there's beauty in looking for the next and the next and the next but couples really easily get polarized around that the one who's coasting feels like the climber is this like hyper competitive capitalist

Speaker 4 and the climber feels like the coaster is just not doing anything. You know, what are you really doing?

Speaker 4 And then the third type of couple is the meaning maker and the money maker.

Speaker 4 You know, when a couple has come together and for one partner, their work is really centered around meaning and purpose. And for the other partner, their work is centered around like it is a paycheck.

Speaker 4 They find meaning and purpose elsewhere. There's a psychologist who found that there's three work orientations.
You either have a job or you have a career or you have a calling.

Speaker 4 And somebody else then came along and studied that when a couple is mismatched on this variable, they're more likely to be in conflict.

Speaker 4 And when one of them experiences job loss, the whole relationship is far more at risk.

Speaker 4 if let's say one of them has a job and one has a career and the person who has the career loses their job the relationship itself is more at risk. Why?

Speaker 4 Because I think when we have a difference in our relationship that we don't fully understand, when we haven't made space for appreciating that a calling is not better than a career, a career is not better than a job.

Speaker 4 These are just different ways

Speaker 4 to do labor in the world. This is not a hierarchy.
There's not better or worse.

Speaker 4 But when we are different from our partner and we don't have language for that difference, we don't have appreciation for that difference, the conditions are so ripe for judgment, for fear, for shame, for blame, for things to go downhill.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 Can we understand that? So if they're mismatched, meaning one person has a calling, one person has a career. Yep.
And then

Speaker 2 I'm already mismatched, so I'm already at risk.

Speaker 4 Yep.

Speaker 2 Then one of the people, say the person with the career loses the job

Speaker 2 then that whole relationship is at risk because the person with the calling doesn't understand what it means to the person with the career to lose their job or the person with the career.

Speaker 2 Like they just can't relate to each other in that loss.

Speaker 4 They can't relate to each other in their loss. And each of them is going to project their way of being onto the other one rather than

Speaker 4 being able to center their partner. Okay.

Speaker 4 You've lost your job. Let's start from square one.

Speaker 4 We have to understand what your job means to you in order to to understand the nature of the loss, what's scary about the loss, rather than projecting like, okay, if I lost my job, my core fear would be

Speaker 4 I'm not going to have enough money and things are going to get unsafe. But for my partner losing their job, the core fear might be loss of identity and feeling like, I don't, I'm not valuable.

Speaker 4 Who am I even anymore?

Speaker 4 So rather than assuming like job loss sucks and just kind of putting a blanket statement over that, it's so important for people to like unpack why does this job loss in this moment in your life suck for you specifically

Speaker 4 because if we don't ask that question of our partner we're going to rush in with our own narrative our own assumptions our own fears

Speaker 2 yeah so even outside of the job loss that suddenly makes sense of these dynamics because how you're treating your job. We both have jobs, but one has an apple and one has an orange.

Speaker 2 And I'm saying, why don't you peel that apple before you eat it? It's like, I'm telling you to treat your job the way I treat my job, but they have wholly different meanings in our lives.

Speaker 3 Yep.

Speaker 3 When I think about these two types of people, so if you're a coaster and a climber, a mini maker and a money maker, it's coincidental and interesting that I would imagine a lot of these people find each other and they're together, right?

Speaker 3 And of course that would create conflict. Of Of course it would, not even necessarily in a negative way, just that would arise.

Speaker 3 But wouldn't there also be even trickier conflict if you had a moneymaker and a moneymaker or two climbers? It feels like this sort of conflict would be almost less tricky

Speaker 3 than if we didn't happen to partner up with people who were different than us. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah, for sure. One of the ways I see that playing out is like people who've perhaps like met in their training program, you know, they met in college or they met in grad school.

Speaker 4 And so they sort of like launched their careers together. And so part of the attraction and part of the draw was we're same, like we're the same.
We're in the same world.

Speaker 4 And maybe we're competitive, but there's also a lot of admiration. There's a lot of familiarity.
I get what you're doing. You get what I'm doing.
And then if one of them.

Speaker 4 for example, steps off the money making track and moves into the meaning making track, it's like this reckoning of, wait a minute, it used to be so easy for us.

Speaker 4 We spoke the same language, we kind of, I understood your world, you understood my world.

Speaker 4 And there can be this loss and this fear around what bonds us, like what bonds us together if we aren't doing the same thing in the same way, which of course happens so often, right?

Speaker 4 Somebody makes a career change or, you know, has a baby and they figure out a childcare situation that's different, but I don't think we make enough space to talk about the loss of that.

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Speaker 1 off.

Speaker 2 These binaries that you have here, I'm inferring, maybe unfairly, that one would seem to make more money, for example, the money maker in in these dynamics

Speaker 2 how much conflict in relationship is a result of that piece because you'd think that might be a bigger piece and i'm just so curious if the actual conflict is around like

Speaker 1 other

Speaker 2 things we bring back to the relationship other than like

Speaker 2 i'm mad that i work so hard and i make a lot of money and that your job costs a lot of our familial time but doesn't net that back to the family like is that as big as a factor as one would assume?

Speaker 4 It really is. It really is.
And I think when couples get locked in, I mean, money is such a huge topic.

Speaker 4 My gosh, it is like, I think part of why it's so huge is it has this illusion of being quite simple. You know, it's like dollars and cents and it feels.

Speaker 4 I think it's sort of similar to like numbers on a scale or all these things where it has like the illusion of being able to be contained and understood and quantified, but there's so much emotion and chaos and loading kind of underneath it.

Speaker 4 And so, yeah, for heterosexual couples today,

Speaker 4 in one half of marriages, he outearns her. And in one half of marriages, she outearns him.
That's great. That's so great.
So neutral, right? Because who cares?

Speaker 4 Like, you know, families need money to be brought in, but think about the thousands and thousands and thousands of years of meaning we have.

Speaker 4 And so oftentimes in that situation, she's got, you know, if she's out earning him, she's got people in her corner, you know, her family or her friends whispering about what's he doing over there, you know, and he's got his own, potentially his own narratives about being a provider.

Speaker 4 And I, you know, I'm always talking about like how being a provider is about providing so much more than a paycheck, providing, you know, stability.

Speaker 4 Do you have any research on which couples are happier or stay together more in terms of the income from male and for the heterosexual couples the male earns more or the woman earns more it definitely is a risk factor when she out earns him but only because of cultural messaging right like there's nothing inherent about that right but it does mean that couples need to collaboratively and creatively figure out how to push back against notions of how it should be you know well and the fact that we have evolved to allow women to make more money so they can take on the male role in that way, but we have not yet evolved so that males take on the women's role of compensating within the household and the unpaid labor to pick up that burden.

Speaker 2 So it's like you can make more money and bring it home. We will allow that to happen, but you will still work an average of five hours more

Speaker 2 in unpaid labor in the home every week, notwithstanding the fact that your partner makes less, that's upsetting enough to the gender system.

Speaker 3 The fact that you're making more.

Speaker 2 Don't further topple the cart by requiring that he

Speaker 2 in any way accommodate this new economics by doing more at home. So I think that's actually like a major, at least in my local world, where

Speaker 2 that dynamic is happening and it's invisible with the like, you make more, nobody knows.

Speaker 2 But the actual, the things we see happen in the house still happen as if we are living in a very traditional home.

Speaker 4 Right. That's why Yves Rodsky's work around this is so important.
All the conversations we're having about invisible labor and gender divisions of labor are so essential.

Speaker 4 But Amanda, you're speaking to a really interesting point, which is the way in which women may be almost like colluding with this, because it's like the story is it's enough of a blow to his ego that he earns less than me.

Speaker 4 Let me at least protect him by acting like we are otherwise a quote-unquote normal family.

Speaker 4 So then we're depriving men, but by doing this, we're depriving men the opportunity to just feel deeply proud and grounded in everything that it takes to run a home, to parent.

Speaker 4 You know, it's like we're reinforcing, which I think happens a ton in patriarchy, we're reinforcing this idea that he couldn't possibly be expected to step into a sense of pride in this way of being, that being a provider of emotional stability, of family stability, like those are beautiful ways of providing.

Speaker 3 It feels like to me that it's something that is cultural and starts very early.

Speaker 3 Like when I'm listening to this, I'm thinking about something that Gloria Steinem said, which was like, we've been telling girls that they can do anything and they can be like boys since the beginning of time, but the world will not change until we start telling boys you can do anything, you can be like girls.

Speaker 3 Like, and I mean that in quotes, of course, like the girls can take on any role that has been traditionally thought of as male.

Speaker 3 Boys can take on any role that has been traditionally thought of as girl, including caretaking, including nurturing, including changing diapers, including all of this.

Speaker 3 And it's like, if you want to test out that notion, just

Speaker 3 think in your body for a second how you feel when you see a little girl being bossy and leading. You feel good.

Speaker 3 And then think about in your body about a little boy in front of a small kitchen holding a doll. and then everybody shrinks back.

Speaker 3 And so this is a cultural thing that will not change in grownups until we can accept it and celebrate it in children because those couples are just acting out that man, it's shame-based.

Speaker 3 And I actually have plenty of friends who I would say think this is true, that I've seen with my own eyes, that are the boldest. biggest leaders in their career spaces.

Speaker 3 And the bigger they are in their career spaces, the smaller they are in their marriages.

Speaker 3 The less they use their voices. When I'm in circles with them on couches, I see them deferring.

Speaker 3 It's because they are so afraid that the world's going to perceive their marriage in a certain way and that's going to upset their husband that in public spaces they get smaller.

Speaker 2 So are these, regardless of gender, the slasher and the traditionalist, the coaster and the climber, the meaning maker and the money maker, have you identified them because they often match up together or have you identified them because they are particularly like fraught?

Speaker 1 Or both.

Speaker 4 I think both. I've identified them because I want couples to have language then for how to talk about it.
Like, for example, the slasher and the traditionalist.

Speaker 4 The traditionalist is, you know, holding on to the family's health insurance, you know, kind of holding that while the slasher is, you know, trying to make a go of this side hustle that can the side hustle become something more.

Speaker 4 And I think the slasher has got kind of their own self-doubt.

Speaker 4 narrative playing of can I really do this and and how much do I need to be apologizing to my partner versus thanking my partner, you know, and so I want to just have a way for couples to be able to talk about that, for the traditionalist to really be so proud of what it takes to hold center while your partner pursues their dreams or makes a go of it, while also feeling really proud of like that there's nothing wrong with working a job.

Speaker 4 And if the traditionalist is feeling some flashes of envy that the slashers over there are following their dreams, what are the ways in which the traditionalist might need to be also inviting in new experiences, hobbies, passion projects, rather than just getting polarized and the slasher feeling like I'm the unpredictable, unreliable dreamer and my partner is the stick in the mud, you know,

Speaker 4 pick up whatever, nine to five, same job. I think that there's so much, there's so much more richness there.

Speaker 4 And I think there's a potential for this couple to together hold the idea that we do need to dream and, you know, be grounded in reality, like that they're both holding a really important facet of relational life and of personal life.

Speaker 2 What's the dynamic of the coaster and the climber and the meaning maker and the money maker? How do they feel about each other? Or what is their insecurity in the relationship vis-a-vis each other?

Speaker 4 The coaster, even if they in some moments feel really sure of the way that they're doing their work in the world, they may fear or they may pick up on or they may hear directly from their climber partner.

Speaker 4 They may just fear that they're not enough. Like, are you disappointed in me?

Speaker 4 Is my career enough? Can you talk about my work in the world with pride, even though this is the work I've been doing for a number of years and I don't particularly have a desire to do more?

Speaker 4 Can you still feel proud of me? Why? What are the ways in which you're proud of me?

Speaker 4 And the climber may feel like, you know, their core fear might be that like their partner just like that, can I be bold? Can I be ambitious?

Speaker 4 And can that be respected rather than seen as you know greedy or grabby or focused on the wrong priorities

Speaker 1 i want to kind of ground this question in the bigger conversation we're having around like when work and love collide how to integrate our working lives with our love lives And so often we are actually spending more time working than with our partners and our families and our spouses.

Speaker 1 What are some ways you have found in couples work

Speaker 1 that can help,

Speaker 1 first of all, bring awareness to maybe some of these frameworks that we've kind of rolled out, number one?

Speaker 1 And number two, what are some things that we can do to help establish this connection between work and love because we need the work and we also need the love And both are important.

Speaker 1 I'm not saying work is more important, but it is an important function in the way that we live our lives.

Speaker 3 So like, how do healthy couples do it? Yeah.

Speaker 1 What's the healthiest things you see?

Speaker 4 Right. Yeah.
In the best of all worlds, we feel audacious in our work because we have the security and safety and like boosting of a partner at home.

Speaker 4 So in the best of all worlds, there's tremendous flow between

Speaker 4 those worlds. And you're right, that that's maybe a place that we touch and move away from and touch and move away from.

Speaker 4 And in this context, in this moment, there's tons of research that shows like we're working way too many hours.

Speaker 4 The boundary between work and home is super diffuse, even more so now with many people working from home and with technology.

Speaker 4 So there is so much responsibility on couples to create boundaries in a world that otherwise wouldn't have them.

Speaker 4 So yeah, I have couples that will just put their phones in a part of the house, even if it's just for an hour, right? Like phone-free time.

Speaker 4 I have a couple that goes to a particular part of their house, you know, for a conversation on a regular basis. And then that part of the house, no phones are welcome.

Speaker 4 Like, just really being intentional about that.

Speaker 4 But then, also, at that deeper level, Abby, I think it's like looking at the ways in which our ambition is both a reflection of our gift and a reflection of our wound. Very often,

Speaker 3 say more about that, please.

Speaker 4 My

Speaker 4 level story might be i have to burn the midnight oil i have to do more this project is due my boss is demanding or i have to reach this next threshold and the world is going to continue to reinforce that

Speaker 4 and i'm good at it and i can do it and i can do it well but is there also that young part of me that is scrambling for like am i enough yet am i enough yet is this good enough right so is our drive is our ambition driven in part

Speaker 4 by a way in which we haven't just, we continue to struggle to like rest comfortably in our wholeness?

Speaker 4 And I think around work stuff, it can be so tricky because the world affirms hyper productivity, it can be really hard to see and get in touch with those layers that have to do with older wounds.

Speaker 3 What is the coaster's wound?

Speaker 4 I think sometimes the coaster's wound can be a fear of being bold.

Speaker 4 If you got slammed as a kid for your ideas, your little kind of splintery edges, the ways in which you were unique, if those things were slammed or shamed or put a dimmer on,

Speaker 4 then risk-taking feels real scary.

Speaker 1 Yeah, failure also. You know, you've tried some things before, failure happens, and you're like, meh, that's fine.
I'm just going to coast.

Speaker 2 So, our work then

Speaker 2 is about our ambition. Our ambition ambition is about our wounds and our desires.

Speaker 2 So how do we determine? It seems like the way to be in a relationship that has healthy stuff with work is to get clear on you individually

Speaker 2 being healthy with your work and knowing what you're doing there.

Speaker 4 Yeah, because if my partner is criticizing me for working too many hours and all I can do is say, you don't get it. This job is so hard.

Speaker 4 Then we're going to be caught in a cycle. We're not going to get very far, right? The more they complain, the more I justify.

Speaker 4 The more I justify, the more they complain, and then eventually like disengage, give up, you know, disconnect.

Speaker 4 But if I can peel back a layer and get a bit more vulnerable and talk about, gosh, when I end up feeling like all eyes are on me, I have to perform. It feels the way I felt when I was a little kid.

Speaker 4 And maybe I do still stay up and work, but at least I've given my partner a window into me. I feel more accessible.
I feel more real to them.

Speaker 4 I've invited them to be in a place of compassion, you know, rather than judgment.

Speaker 2 How much of what happens

Speaker 2 in our relationships over work have to do with like us kind of preemptively justifying

Speaker 2 our work stuff or like trying to insulate our work

Speaker 2 things

Speaker 2 from criticism by like preemptively criticizing another person, right?

Speaker 2 If the coaster is worried about being seen as like kind of lazy and complacent, that might make a lot of sense that they will call the climber a greedy, like

Speaker 2 money-hungry capitalist

Speaker 2 because they're insulating themselves from that.

Speaker 2 What do you see with couples that way?

Speaker 4 Yeah, like a projection process and a getting ahead of it. Yeah.
It's so easy to finger point in an attempt to bypass or get ahead of criticism. Yes, it feels really effective.

Speaker 4 You're trying to shut the other person down, like get them before they can get you.

Speaker 4 And that's, I think, where people miss, because each of these ways of being can feel like the right way of being, right? For somebody who's highly ambitious, that feels like the right way to be.

Speaker 4 For somebody who has given the middle finger to ambition, that feels like the right way to be. That feels really liberated and really subversive.

Speaker 4 You know, so each person has a whole narrative that justifies and backs up their way of being without recognizing that in the context of our relationship,

Speaker 4 let's not do that. Like, let's not be that way.
Let's figure out how to honor that this is complicated for both of us. My struggle with ambition is tied to my long-standing fear of failure.

Speaker 4 My attachment to my ambition is tied to my long-standing belief. that I have to be excellent so that my family feels okay about themselves, which is a lot of where my ambition comes from personally.

Speaker 4 Then it invites us into a really different kind of a conversation.

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Speaker 2 I was reading in your research or research that you had shared how

Speaker 2 incredibly fluid all this stress is, like forward and backward and around. And that they were showing how

Speaker 2 if my

Speaker 2 partner is having

Speaker 2 trouble in work or or has like a work stress related thing that physiologically,

Speaker 2 emotionally everything, my body experiences

Speaker 2 their work stress

Speaker 2 and like from all of these different physiological markers. That's wild.
And then I bring that into my workplace and then the loop just constantly keeps going.

Speaker 2 If a person is listening right now, they know that their couplehood has stress with one or both or either conflict among their jobs.

Speaker 2 What are actual ways you can start having the conversation to try to like soak up some of that stress and take it out of your relationship so that you're not just continuing to flood?

Speaker 4 Yep. Yep.
That study you're talking about like blew me away. It really was.
It was a longitudinal study that found that the partner of the person who had, it's called person work mismatch.

Speaker 4 You're doing a job that doesn't suit you very well and you've done that job for years and years and years.

Speaker 4 If you have poor person-work mismatch, or you have a person-work mismatch, your partner's health is at risk, right? Because it's a grind.

Speaker 4 It's a grind to live with somebody who comes in the door every day and they're suffering. So what I want couples to do to the best that they can, because this is hard, is make their home a haven.

Speaker 4 You know, make their, I'm thinking about the example you had given, Amanda, at the top of the show about imagining a black woman who's had 13 microaggressions at the day and she comes in her home.

Speaker 4 I want her home to be her exhale. I want her to be able to look in her partner's eyes and just have her partner be like, I get it.
I got you.

Speaker 4 You know, that then at least they're able to put that somewhere besides the space between

Speaker 4 you and me.

Speaker 4 It's the serenity prayer, right? They may not be able to change

Speaker 4 some parts of this, but can they accept and can they protect? I love when couples ask this question, like, how do we protect our relationship from the impact of

Speaker 4 X here? You know, a job that is not serving one of us. How do we protect us from the impact of that?

Speaker 2 And what are some of the creative ways you've seen that people do protect their relationship from this? Like, is it by just naming it, talking about it?

Speaker 2 Because I'm imagining like that sounds awesome to walk in the door. But when both people are walking in the door carrying that stress, who's making the sanctuary?

Speaker 4 The woman.

Speaker 4 Do we have homemads on this?

Speaker 4 We're both lady in this relationship.

Speaker 1 Sanctuary.

Speaker 3 You go to Home Goods and you put a sign in your kitchen that says, relax.

Speaker 1 Relax.

Speaker 1 Plus this home or something.

Speaker 4 Everyone, relax. For my partner and I, it's walking.
Like it is like literally like getting into our bodies and going for a walk.

Speaker 4 What helps you all with like kind of just putting work where it needs to go? What What are practices that you've?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I'm thinking about this because we have a really special situation in our work and our lives. I mean, I think about this endlessly.
I don't have a separation.

Speaker 3 All the most important people in my life are also the people that I work with. And I'm not, I'm talking about my sister.
I'm talking about my wife. I'm talking about my daughter.

Speaker 3 My daughter has a music career. Like maybe the most important thing in my brain right now.

Speaker 3 is like that's beautiful but also a freaking challenge and a half and where are the pockets where we're not talking about work?

Speaker 3 I mean, last night, my sister reached out to say something about like an emotional thing about our family. And I was like, oh my God, we're talking about something that's not work.

Speaker 3 That was amazing. And that doesn't happen.

Speaker 1 And with Abby and I, we were just doing a couple session.

Speaker 1 And one of the things that Glennon was able to express super lovingly, I heard it and I didn't get scared, was that like she really wants to miss me.

Speaker 1 And we're so in each other's lives all the time that there isn't that experience of, so, you know, I go surfing more now and I go to the gym and I give the time that we spend together a little bit of space so she can miss me.

Speaker 1 I don't have that same problem

Speaker 1 that she does.

Speaker 3 Also, I just want to be clear. I didn't say that.
I said some things and the therapist

Speaker 2 reiterated.

Speaker 3 I didn't come to a meeting and say, I need to miss you. Get the hell out of my face.

Speaker 2 Like it was looking forward to some times I can miss your ass.

Speaker 3 But it is an issue for people who work together.

Speaker 4 Oh, 100%.

Speaker 2 Or the people that all work from home, even in the same by each other. Like everyone works together now, even if they don't work together.

Speaker 4 Even if their jobs are right, that's right. That's right.
But that framing, what a beautiful framing. Like, I want to miss you.
Yeah. That's so much easier to hear than, can you maybe go somewhere?

Speaker 1 Can you make it a lot of fun? And this is a little helpful tidbit for folks who might share the same experience.

Speaker 1 When I left that session, I really listened to what the therapist said because really what Glennon was saying is like, I really want to miss you.

Speaker 1 And that is better than like, we're always around each other and like, we don't have any space. And I could go down the road of like, oh my God, she doesn't like to be around me.

Speaker 1 But the truth is, is we are always around each other. And she really does.
And I also think that there's a part of me too, that really wants to miss you.

Speaker 3 I remember the therapist saying, because love is looking at another person. You look at another person and you think, there you are.
I love that person.

Speaker 3 But when you're not individuated at all, you never have that moment. Yeah.
You know, the therapist that said, it's like that moment where you are at a party where I was like, okay, stop there.

Speaker 3 Like, I'm not, that's not helpful.

Speaker 1 I guess I'm going to have to activate my emotion.

Speaker 4 This world used to speak.

Speaker 3 But she said, it's like that moment where you're at a party and you look up and you see your person walk in the room and you're like, oh, that's my person.

Speaker 3 But that moment requires

Speaker 3 a separation in the first place.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that you not be in the same room for one minute.

Speaker 3 If we were at a party, we would be in the corner on the couch together. You know, so anyway, I guess we could do a whole episode on working together with people.
But I do wonder if,

Speaker 3 especially with so many people working from home now and always being on top of each other, that maybe there's an energetic move from the answer is making home a sanctuary.

Speaker 3 For us, the answer might be going outward and doing things together that are, we go for walks. We try not to talk about work.
It's outings based as opposed to like sanctuary of home right now.

Speaker 4 In, yeah.

Speaker 4 Yep. Yeah.

Speaker 4 I also, you're talking about this togetherness, separateness thing, which is again, so real for every single couple.

Speaker 4 And couples have different sizes of buckets, you know, if like Abby, you were saying that like you don't necessarily feel that need for space in quite the same way Glennon does.

Speaker 4 It doesn't mean you love Glennon more than she loves you. It means you are just different.
But my gosh, we load those differences up with so much meaning.

Speaker 4 The one that wants more togetherness feels like, why don't you want more? And the one who wants more space would think, you know, we add all these layers to it.

Speaker 4 So I really, I love that you brought that example up and that there was a way of kind of holding it differently without going into the very real fears that can get activated when we take the difference.

Speaker 4 and say that there's a better or a worse one is right one is wrong and what does this mean about us and you you know, all of that.

Speaker 1 Well, don't worry. I have gone down that road.
And I feel like I have teased Gunnen every once in a while. Like, I actually think that I like you more than you like me.

Speaker 2 And drives her bonkers.

Speaker 4 We have that. And Todd has no upper limit that he's found yet of time that he could be with me.
And I need so much alone time. And I think that he does feel that way to him.

Speaker 4 In some moments, it feels that way. And again, it's like that acceptance change, you know, kind of a thing too, right?

Speaker 4 Like, can you have different needs and not add the additional layers of what if and what if and what if? And that's the thing about liking and loving is we never, there's no metric.

Speaker 4 There's no metric for

Speaker 4 how much I love you versus how much you love me. There's no metric for it.
But I think we do, we try to find these metrics and these elements of proof because it makes us feel so freaking vulnerable.

Speaker 4 Totally.

Speaker 3 I like the idea of letting go of the idea that the one who needs solitude is less loving.

Speaker 4 I do think that that

Speaker 3 labeling the need for solitude or the introvert or the whatever as the one who loves less, I think I could live without that for you.

Speaker 3 Because I don't feel that at all. Like I just think that there are some people who feel like they exist more when they're in relation to other people.
They exist. They feel their existence.

Speaker 3 And I think that there are people who feel their existence a little bit more easily when they're in solitude.

Speaker 3 And that really has to do more with self-love and the way that you get it as opposed to loving the other person or not.

Speaker 1 That's good, Glennon. Thanks.
I hear it. I really hear that.
That's good.

Speaker 2 Well, it's like you fill yourself up and bring yourself back to a relationship. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's how you do it, right? Yeah.

Speaker 4 Well, as I say, and the whole thing is dynamic, right? So you may be in a season of your relationship where Glennon feels like she likes Abby more than Abby likes funny.

Speaker 4 You know, like it made these things.

Speaker 4 I know my husband will be like, during this decade, I liked you more than me and then during this decade you liked me more than i liked you like he'll kind of look at that big macro picture like chart it out in ways that doesn't ultimately matter but it is interesting that there's like the little cycle of a day and there's like the big cycle of the decade look at the sweetest i love that I find that so liberating.

Speaker 2 And so, because you're like, yeah, we can have that little dynamic going on for 10 years, but that's a beauty of like a very long relationship. Like work.
Someone's going to come.

Speaker 2 Your performance report is next week, and you're out of here. You know, that's a nice space.

Speaker 2 When you're talking about that research you did about the job mismatch and like all we've been talking about about you bring yourself to the relationship and then things show up because your stuff and their stuff equals

Speaker 2 your collective stuff. If the person who's partnered with the job mismatch person has that much physical emotional stress,

Speaker 2 then the existence of a job mismatch

Speaker 2 with the person directly has to be incredibly stressful.

Speaker 2 How much do you see with all this job stress has to do with kind of like a martyring of people to jobs that they think they should have, or maybe that they actually really do need to have to take care of their families?

Speaker 2 So I guess I'm asking like

Speaker 2 some of these dynamics could be a problem because you love your job so much and the other person's resentful of that.

Speaker 2 But how much do you see is just that people are in jobs that they're miserable in and therefore they're miserable in their relationships?

Speaker 4 Well,

Speaker 4 the way you're saying it, I think is like a really

Speaker 4 potent gateway into this conversation because it's like, listen, babe, I know that you can, you know, we wouldn't say martyr, but like, I know that you can keep doing this job that really does not suit you and does not fit you.

Speaker 4 But if the price that we pay for you continuing to do that is also my health is at risk, we have to look at this a little bit differently.

Speaker 4 Because the price, it's not just your choice about your body and your time and your energy.

Speaker 4 You're making a choice that has ramifications for me as well, which I think is such a hard thing about being in a long-term relationship, right?

Speaker 4 Is that they're the choices that one of us makes has impact on both of us. But there's a way in which that conversation becomes a bit more neutral when we can cite the research.

Speaker 4 The research research shows that it's not good for you to be in a job that truly doesn't suit you, but it also isn't good for me to have a front row seat to your suffering in this way, day after day, week after week, month after month.

Speaker 4 So what might be possible here?

Speaker 3 Yeah, and I'm an Alan Honor, and it feels to me like it's in those situations for people who are listening, I can tell you from personal experience that it's probably, you got to claim your own experience.

Speaker 3 So instead of going and like this is bad for you you really got to like be like i can't watch

Speaker 4 i can't it's affecting me right taking your own responsibility yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it is a drain on a relationship to bear witness day after day to somebody's you know kind of complaining over and over again about their unhappiness you know and we all have a limit on how much empathy we can offer without also then asking okay so what might you be able to do differently here so i think some of us can then get you know if our partner is being martyry about their own unhappiness i think we can get a bit martyry also about i guess i got to give more sympathy i guess i got to give more empathy i guess i well you know going into your point like there's a way that you have to take care of yourself too

Speaker 2 for people who

Speaker 2 are having marriage issues who haven't yet identified that career is the source of conflict Cause sometimes it is so insidious, you don't really know.

Speaker 2 You just feel like, I remember for me before we started working on all this stuff and we're in a great place now, but like, I remember just being so baffled by any of it.

Speaker 2 Like, I don't understand how to do this right, but I do understand how to do my work right. I know how to check things off the list and have success over there.

Speaker 2 So I felt like a draw to go do that because

Speaker 2 it was like orderly and made sense. And relationships are so much more complex and harder to know if you're doing it right that that is a dynamic that would happen sometimes.

Speaker 2 I'm just wondering if there's any things that you see that are like

Speaker 2 might want to pay attention if this is happening or

Speaker 2 just ways into

Speaker 2 starting this discussion that don't feel threatening to either side if you already know it's an issue.

Speaker 3 I think that's a really good question. What are some red flags? Work might be killing your relationship or work might be if.

Speaker 3 If you're a person who's listening and you don't know if work is hurting your marriage or hurting your relationship, how would people know?

Speaker 4 Yeah, some of the indicators that work is hurting your relationship is that you and your partner spend the vast majority of your time and energy talking about work, that the quality of that conversation between the two of you is like a cross-complainty.

Speaker 4 You know, this happened at work. Yeah, but listen to what happened at my work.

Speaker 4 Yeah, but listen to that sort of suffering Olympics where there's a ping-pong game back and forth about who had the worst day or you're not going to believe this.

Speaker 4 Versus, I think couples can have productive conversations, right? And where in a productive conversation, I turn to my partner and I say, I'd love to run something by you from work.

Speaker 4 I may even say, I would love some problem solving, or I would love you just to be a sounding board, like really getting specific about what would be helpful to me in this moment.

Speaker 4 So I'm taking responsibility for what I'm bringing to my partner about work.

Speaker 4 I think also that feeling that I'm pulling away from my partner so that I can work.

Speaker 4 And it's not just like if there's a little part of me whispering like, you don't actually have to do that work thing right now.

Speaker 4 It may be that it is that you are deriving a lot of competence from your work in a moment when your relationship feels confounding, upsetting, confusing.

Speaker 4 It's another one.

Speaker 4 I mean, certainly one would be if you feel like in conversations with your work colleagues, you are talking about your relationship and your partner in a way that you wouldn't want your partner to hear you talking about them.

Speaker 4 That's another indicator that there's something going on at a deeper level that is positioning you work versus relationship, right?

Speaker 4 The way we want to feel is that our work life and our love life are sort of informing and fueling and supporting each other.

Speaker 4 So times when it feels like my work is at the expense of my relationship, that's another like blinking indicator light that something is off.

Speaker 2 That is such a good myth too, to bust because we always view like work and family as this zero sum. Like if one gets more, the other one gets less.

Speaker 2 But the research is showing that the better one is, the better the other one is, and vice versa. If your family is suffering, your work is inevitably suffering.

Speaker 2 If your work is suffering, your family is suffering because of that loop that goes back and forth.

Speaker 2 So that's really helpful because I think America has this weird like, gonna have to sacrifice over here to make that one better thing, which doesn't seem like the research bears out. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 And just psychologically, as an individual, we are stronger when we have places of self-expression in our work and places of connection in our love lives.

Speaker 4 Like they each kind of serve a part of ourself to make us feel really whole as a human. And work doesn't have to be paid work.
It could be your volunteer work.

Speaker 4 It could be your creative work, however that looks, but just having parts of you that you get to nourish that are about you, and parts of you that you nourish that are a part of the we that you're cultivating with your partner.

Speaker 4 In terms of resources, Amanda, also, we've got a bunch of stuff that we've prepped and created for the pod squad on the website.

Speaker 4 So that would be another way in because I think it is really important for couples to have neutral conversation starters.

Speaker 4 So we've got sets of questions and ways of thinking about like, how are you as as a person interfacing with your work in this moment?

Speaker 4 And those are ways of inviting you and your partner to have a different kind of conversation rather than figuring out who's screwed up.

Speaker 4 No conversation between partners ever goes well when it's like the goal of this conversation is to figure out who's screwed up, who's done worse, you know, who is at fault.

Speaker 4 So these are resources to help the two of you get shoulder to shoulder and look together at these.

Speaker 4 multi-layered, you know, just tensions that we have to hold, these paradoxes that we have to hold in our relationships, that we get to hold in our relationships.

Speaker 3 You are saying that if you are a person who has found yourself in this conversation in any way and you want more and you want a way to enter into these conversations in a way that's going to disarm both of you and get you to a better place, you have created conversation starters.

Speaker 3 So, where will people find this?

Speaker 2 We'll put it in the show notes, but it's dr alexandrasolomon.com, correct? D-R.

Speaker 4 Yeah, slash hard things.

Speaker 1 Slash hard things. Oh, that's so great.

Speaker 2 D-R, Alexandrasolomon.com slash hard things.

Speaker 2 That's fantastic. Thank you for doing that for us.
Well, you're welcome. Thank you.

Speaker 4 That's my love language. Resources are my love language.

Speaker 2 There's so many of them over there. I've been paddling my way through them and they're beautiful, as are your books.
We're so, so grateful for you coming here.

Speaker 2 And thanks for coming back again this time. And

Speaker 2 just really grateful for your work and very thankful that you share so much time and wisdom with us.

Speaker 3 Thank you, Pod Squad. We love you.
Bye-bye.

Speaker 1 See you next time.

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Speaker 3 We Can Do Hard Things is created and hosted by Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, and Amanda Doyle in partnership with Odyssey.

Speaker 3 Our executive producer is Jenna Wise-Berman, and the show is produced by Lauren Lograsso, Allison Schott, and Bill Schultz.