A Workaholic in the Family

Marriage to a workaholic can wear you down, not just emotionally but physically and psychologically. Imagine living with someone who puts work above all else, is forever staying late at work, sometimes until 10 or 11 o’clock because there is something so important it just can’t wait. Your friends may even suggest he must be seeing someone but in your heart you know it’s the same old lover that he has had all along, work. You make dinner and serve it as hot as you can just in the hopes that he will spend a few more minutes at the dinner table.

You attend family dinners, birthdays and functions without him because he is working, or had such a hard day at work that he needs to relax. Everyone else seems to do couple things together but you are always at home or doing things with your children alone. You may even begin to do all the household chores all alone just to see if he will notice, but he doesn’t.

You are always the only one without your significant other at parties and when he does come it feels like you are there with a stranger. It is a lonely life. Competing with the workplace is a lost cause and eventually you give up, give in and surrender. When you feel alone in a marriage because your husband uses work as his way of dealing with the world your self esteem begins to crumble, resentment grows and the marriage falls apart. The problem is that the workaholic gets his self worth from working and achieving at work. His colleges become more familiar than his own family.

For him to admit this would of course be unacceptable because workaholics tend to be perfectionists. Often people who have low self esteem to begin with because of difficult childhoods fall prey to becoming workaholics. The children suffer to. Little jimmy begins to spend too much time with his best buddy because his dad is a soccer dad and takes time with his son every day. The teen daughter doesn’t really know her father because he spends long hours at the workplace and when he finally arrives home doesn´t really know how to connect with her. The kids stop asking for things and begin to believe they have to have something important to say if they are going to bother their workaholic parent.

They stop expecting them to come to school activities and begin to feel they are not important enough to expect anything different. They see the relationship between their parents and begin to think it is normal. Eventually these kids have to grow up and get married but what kind of example do they have to rely on when making choices in their own lives. They often feel like they can never rise up to the workaholics high standards and may underachieve as a result. Workaholics often have unreasonable expectations for their children. They redo the bed that the child has made because it is not up to par or criticize the way they dress, their school work, work ethic, athletic ability.

When you are constantly undermined, it affects your self esteem and creativity. We all want our children to be confident, capable balanced individuals but what are we modeling, what kind of example do we set? Lack of self esteem can affect everything you do in your life.There is no reward for initiative and so the willingness to do things on their own seems to disappear. Why wash the dishes when mom will wash them again anyway. Having a workaholic parent can negatively affect children so if you think you may be a workaholic I would suggest you visit workaholics anonymous where you can take a quiz to find out if you are one as well as get help.

Drifa Ulfarsdottir CPC

The Work Life Balance Coach for high achieving and executive parents

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Copyright © Drifa Ulfarsdottir