Do you spend more time in bed using your laptop and responding to Slack messages than with your partner? Then maybe it’s time for a reality check.
When our romantic relationships place too much of a burden on our professional lives, it can lead to resentment, jealousy, and ultimately breakup—especially if we expect our partners to shoulder an unfair share of the stress of work.
“We come with a set of expectations that our intimate partners are a source of emotional support and that we can be our most authentic selves,” says Alexandra Solomon, a Chicago psychologist and host of the podcast “Love Reimagined.” tell us wealth. While discovering this is a “blessing,” she adds, “it can come back to bite us when we don’t realize the impact our burnout has on how we perform in front of them.”
It’s a pervasive problem: For example, 83% of respondents to Deloitte’s workplace burnout survey said burnout negatively impacts their relationships. Likewise, in Headspace’s 2024 Employee Mindset Report, 71% of employees said workplace stress led to the end of personal relationships.
Solomon said a big part of the problem is that the line between work and home life can be difficult to draw, especially in remote and hybrid work structures. That’s why it’s important to set aside time and energy for all aspects of our lives, including time to connect with partners outside of discussing work projects.
Here are five tips to make sure burnout doesn’t ruin the romance in your life.
1. Resist the urge to compare
Typically, Solomon says, when partners are having trouble at work, a competitive streak emerges—a workplace stress Olympics, if you will.
“The conversation could start like, ‘I want to share my day with you because you are such an important sounding board and safe place,'” she says. “But the conversation can have a sneaky way of devolving into comparing who has it worse.”
Solomon recommends resisting the urge to compare your own experiences to your partner’s, and remember that all stress, including that arising from such competition, is unnecessary and can have a negative impact on our health.
2. Set up “micro rituals”‘
Creating ways to symbolize the transition from work time to family time—if not especially, if you work from home—is crucial to the strength of your relationship.
“For some people, it’s on their way home, or when you change out of your workday clothes, it’s almost ritualistic to say, ‘I’m off today, I’ve done my job, I show up. Yes, I did what I had to do and it will be waiting for me tomorrow,” she said. “Whatever you use to set up a micro-ritual to transition from your workday to time with your partner,” she says, it’s worth it.
3. Performance reviews aren’t just for the office
Performance metrics, desired salary increases, and the basic need to keep your job are all reliable motivators for a job well done. But what about staying motivated at home?
“We don’t think, ‘I want to be more connected to my partner in a year,’ ‘I want us to achieve this in our lives,'” said Jenna Gerard, a licensed psychologist and chief clinical officer at Headspace. Jenna Glover said. wealth. But, she stresses, maybe we should.
“Part of it is intentionality and really doing that [home] Space,” Glover explained. “When people do this, they succeed at work and in their relationships.”
Glover recommends relationship performance reviews as a way to ensure we don’t get lost at work or miss out on important time with our partners.
“Take a moment and say, ‘There is no template that can be structured for success in my relationship like a job performance review, but I will take the time to determine what it actually looks like,'” she advises.
And don’t worry about it being too formal. Instead, Glover says the key is to focus on sitting down with your partner and sharing your goals and expectations for your family, career and one-on-one relationship.
4. Saving “romance” by broadly defining it
Stress does affect libido. According to the Cleveland Clinic, stress can reduce your libido by distracting you from your sexual desires, while chronic stress can interfere with hormone levels, leading to a lower libido.
“No one’s desires increase because of pressure,” Solomon said.
But romance and connection with your partner don’t necessarily start and end with sex, she said.
“The definition of ‘romance’ is that we do things that help us feel connected,” she says. “There are so many ways to feel connected besides sex.”
She recommends making small, meaningful acknowledgments of intimacy and counteracting burnout at work—for example, playing a game with your partner, dancing in the kitchen together, or lighting a candle while eating dinner.
“Part of it is fighting back,” Solomon said, “and saying, ‘No, my work doesn’t take up my time. and My sexual energy.
5. Try to avoid putting your partner on the defensive
If you feel like you’re missing out on time with your partner because of a job (or two jobs), a gentle way to start trying to counteract this is to have a light conversation about it: a screen-free How was your night? How about planning a fun outing? Solomon says your partner can’t always read your thoughts or body language for clues about what you want.
But she added that blame and blame can cause them to feel attacked and guilty, putting them on the defensive. Instead, calmly tell your partner that you miss their undivided attention.
Additionally, she emphasized that burnout is often, if not always, related to company culture rather than employees. So while it’s easy to blame your partner for responding to work-related messages after hours, their employer also has a responsibility to respect non-work time boundaries.
“[Your partner] There’s no culture created that requires employees to be available at all times, or a refusal to hire the right number of people to get the job done, or any kind of dynamic in the organization,” she said. “So I think part of it is making sure the responsibility is there and that’s where the responsibility lies.”
In fact, according to Deloitte’s survey, nearly 70% of professionals believe their employer is not doing enough to prevent or mitigate burnout within their organization, and 21% said their company does not offer any programs or initiatives to prevent or mitigate burnout .
“People need jobs. So it’s important for employees to think about, ‘What will my work experience look like?’ You want your job to support your quality of life, not diminish it.
We all have limited resources – limited time, limited energy – and investing “too much” in your work will ensure you don’t achieve a good work-life balance, she added.
Solomon said parsing this is becoming increasingly difficult because the term “work-life balance” itself can be deceptive.
“From our perspective, we believe these are two different areas,” she said. “But the boundaries between home and work are actually quite permeable.”
More on marriage and relationships:
