Married to a workaholic

[PortraitOfAnAfternoon]

So I nc’d for this because it is difficult to admit to and talk about. I’ve been unsuccessfully hiding from it for a while.

Been married for nearly nine years. Over the course of the lockdowns it’s become blindingly clear DH is a workaholic.

He’s always worked long hours in a professional role, lots of travel, lots of pressure. Kind of goes with the territory with the job he’s in to an extent. Although he’s always been more flexible, committed, dedicated etc than most of his colleagues that I know.

But since WFH for the last year now I see the real patterns much more clearly. The anxiety, even rage if his work is interrupted at all. How much for his self-image is tied up with his work performance, how he has almost no identity outside work left.

I realise now that a lot of the work travel was in padded so he could work very long hours whilst he was away and know he can’t hide it.

In the first lockdown he did try to hide it a bit, but now he realises he can’t and he doesn’t even bother.

He works at least 12 hours every day, often 14 or 15 and 4 or 5 hours each day at the weekend.

The atmosphere at home is very oppressive with him working away furiously and I feel like I have to tiptoe around quiet all the time.

For a while I’ve been staying up til the wee small hours just to have some time where I can feel like I can actually breathe, although it’s not ideal as I still have to be quiet due to people sleeping etc.

During the first lockdown I thought it might be because they had some people furloughed but all those people are back now and they have been for months and his company are even hiring new people.

Life seemed better during the first few months of him wfh because he was not going away on trips anymore.

The thing is I’m done. There is really nothing I can do about it unless he wants to. And he doesn’t. I know there are lots of insecurities etc behind it, but the fact is he isn’t interested in resolving any of that.

His only emotional attachment is to his work, he has no interest in anything else. Not me, not family, not friends, no hobbies or interests.

So I know I have to leave. I’m not sure of the practicalities of that yet but I’m sure I’ll work it out.

I just feel kind of exhausted by the futility of it all. Like I’ve just thrown away all the love and emotion I put into our marriage. Like I’m traumatised by the neglect and the emptiness.

My dad was a compulsive gambler who got into so much debt we ended up homeless and he was violent to my mum as they were breaking up.

I honestly thought in my DH I’d found the absolute opposite of my dad - someone kind, responsible, hard working, reliable. It’s just that there is a different kind of compulsion knowing away at him.

Less destructive than the gambling maybe, but there is no chance for happiness here. But there’s just nothing left of our relationship- no fun, no laughter, no intimacy, no sex. Everything is consumed by work.

And now I feel I can’t trust myself either and I have nothing left emotionally to build on. I don’t know how to get myself back, it’s been all eaten up.

This was really sad to read. My DH is similar, so I empathise. I cope by focusing on our DD, my work, friends and family. This is so much harder currently, however. We’ve become so detached that when we communicate now, we always seem to argue. He’s been working away recently and I feel that I can breathe again. Not sure about the future TBH.

So sorry to read this Portrait. That sounds so difficult. I have friends who are married to workaholics and I do worry for them. What does he say when you talk to him about it? Is he happy with such a one dimensional existence? What's that saying..."the graveyards are full of indispensable men". At the end of the day, if he had to stop working, someone would fill his shoes in no time.

I enjoy work and am very committed to it. But you are absolutely right that there needs to be more than that in life.

You sound very emotionally aware. You will be able to build a new life if you need too. to you.

Thank you both for being so kind.

@BadoingbadoingI think you hit the nail on the head when you said it was sad. I am sad about it and I have been both hiding from that sadness and having to hide that sadness from him for a while.

I hate being sad. It’s by far the most difficult emotion for me to handle. I find it easier to be angry, because being angry can give me energy to channel into change.

But nonetheless. I am sad. And that tells me I have given up hope for change over this. Sad over the us that ina lol reality probably never really was.

I am a bit angry with myself for not seeing it/putting up with it for so long/yada yada yada. That tells me I have hope for change in myself- to change my life, my living arrangements, my relationship and not to repeat the same mistakes again. I ‘ve made a lot of mistakes over this- ignored warning signs, poured too much one sided effort in etc. I understand why I did that and I can forgive myself for it and move on with a changed attitude/outlook/set of behaviours.

You’re right that I need to concentrate my energies in other more positive and fruitful directions/

@Badoingbadoing Thank you for what you said about emotional awareness. I just need not to fight being sad anymore. It’s been kind of blocking me.

He won’t really say much about it when I approach it directly. Shuts down or storms off or flies into a rage. So I have stopped approaching it directly. My dad hit my mum when she confronted him about his gambling. Which was his fault not her’s, but nonetheless I think I will feel happier and safer if I gently extricate myself and back away gradually whilst letting my energy flow in more positive directions.

Before the penny really dropped about the workaholism and I just thought he worked too hard/was a bit too conscientious/was too much of a people pleaser at work we did talk about the situation more tangentially.

He’s not happy. He recognises he has low self- esteem and uses work as both an escape from that and to build up his self- image.

He feels he has no choice, he’s always felt that. He watched his dad work long hours when he was little and that is the model imprinted on him.

He feels a lot of responsibility and obligation to colleagues. He sees himself as a provider both professionally (he wins a lot of business and so keeps a lot of colleagues in work effectively) and personally.

He also sees that both his parents were emotionally neglected themselves and so lacked the skills to emotionally nurture him when he was a child. He read a a book on childhood emotional neglect and identified with it a lot. It made a big difference for about a month after he read it then he forgot and got stuck into work again. He bought the follow up book (Empty no more or similar) but it’s gathering dust on the shelf.

The pattern at his workplace is this. A promotion looms and he works really hard to get int he frame for it; so he’s effectively doing two jobs. Then he gets the promotion and is in charge of hiring his replacement for his old role, and inevitably that takes a year or two. Partly that’s because he’s in a senior specialist role where people are scarce and have long notice periods, but it’s also partly because he has impossibly high standards for himself and others.

So he’s usually doing two jobs for two to three years and by the time that cycle comes to end the next promotion is looming... rinse and repeat. We’re midway through the fourth cycle of that. Someone has just agreed to take over his old role, but it will be six months before they’re fully on board and they are more junior than ideally he would have liked so they will need “oversight and support” for the next few years. Basil his will run slap bang into the timescale for a new role heading up expanding the business into an area he has some expertise in, where he has already won new contracts. Just at the time the only specialist in the company in the same area will retire and so have lots of work to pass on.

So the point of that long explanation is that usually he says “I’ll be working less and have more time once I get the new role/give up the old role” and for years I bought that.

But about six months ago I said “Yes and by the time you hire someone new and get them up to speed the next new role will have come along and you’ll be straight into two jobs again”.

He told me the next one would likely be to do with the expansion and I was vastly over estimating the amount of extra time that would take over and above his current workload, it wouldn’t be much extra.

And I said it that his current workload meant it was unusual for me to see him for two hours a day whilst he was wfh, so how much more was there to trim? And he went quiet. And all the blood drained from his face.

And I think that’s when the penny really dropped for me.

Since then he keeps drip feeding me news about the new person starting etc and how much more time he will have soon. I think he genuinely thinks that paradise is just over the horizon. Or at least that I will believe him when he says it will.

But he’s working even longer hours at the moment. If I ever go to bed before him or have a bath, he’s straight into his office to get some work done before I’m halfway up the stairs.

So I have just stopped believing that paradise will ever materialise.

Sorry that was long. I’ve obviously been bottling that up.

Anyway, he’s not happy, he knows he’s not happy, that he has low self-esteem etc.. He sees work as his salvation from that.

I do respect and admire him a lot. I love him to bits. But I only get one life and I want to be happy.

I have a friend who sounds like this. He’s in a very senior and prestigious role. I met him after a very long time and all he did was talk about his work and the stress related to it. He was incredibly tense throughout and I wanted to run away from him. I was really upset that he’d become so self-absorbed and he talked at me for most out meeting. I know this is nothing compared with having to live with someone like this but just wanted to offer my sympathies to you. I have no intention of seeing my friend again.

By the way, there wa a fascinating thread recently about a poster being married to a lawyer. It was eye-opening. You might find some insights there if you search for it.

Does he not have a home office or office shed? Explore getting this , since having his own space should make things less tense at home.

If he was always travelling, at meetings etc you must have known all along how committed to his work he has been yet you still chose to marry him. Enjoying the financial perks his job presumably brings means you have to accept the downsides too . Perhaps as well he wants to prove himself for his workplace since his job may be less secure or more busy now due to covid.

It doesn’t get any better, my DH is/was a workaholic he didn’t even have that high powered a job just his anxiety made him work so hard, he suffered from imposter syndrome. He missed so much family stuff, I really felt like a single parent, he could never give me any emotional support as all his energy was given to his work. I was ill for a while, he couldn’t possibly take time off work, my mum helped me out. No sex or even emotional intimacy. I tried talking til I was blue in the face, tried to plan time away but he was always too busy, it just gradually eroded everything between us and he didn’t even seem to notice or care. We are older and our kids are grown up so we still live together but as flat mates, it works for us, I don’t hate him but I feel unbearably sad for all that we have lost.
The punchline to all this is that he lost his job in the first lockdown, international company that just closed the office, and now he has nothing to show for all those years of sacrifice.

OP I've really read a more articulate piece of self awareness here. I don't know what career you have but it feels like you should do bloody well at something!
You don't really need anyone here to tell you anything, you already know. The thread called something like "is anyone married to a lawyer" mentioned above had many women with similarly obsessed husbands. Some had made their peace with it and just made parallel lives enjoying the monetary rewards, which I assume you are also getting, others were deeply unhappy, others were lawyers themselves with insight.
Anyway, good luck, my advice would be to get out and enjoy life, it passes all too quickly.

Really = rarely

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/relationships/4163205-Those-of-you-married-to-a-lawyer

@Milomonster Thanks for the thread recommendation. I’m reading it now. Bit of a kick in the gut. I could have written most of the posts. He’s not a lawyer but his job is similar.

I know he won’t ever change as it is a choice. I used to work in a role where I had lots of senior people as clients and really saw the difference between how some people chose to handle their roles and how others let it take over here personalities.

@Maskedrevenger I’m sorry you’ve had to endure this too. I get what you say about “flat mates”.

Until a few months ago I was definitely “staff” but I’ve been drawing better boundaries round house things for a while and it’s helped me get perspective.

He’s really starting to push back on that in the last few days though, I suspect he’s got deadlines looming with the end of the financial year coming up.

Normally at those kind of times I just sweep in and take care of everything home related etc seamlessly without him even having to ask, because I wanted to have his back. Going to disengage from that way of thinking and acting.

Thanks @pog100 I shuttle back and forth between the charity sector and higher education. Yes, life is too short for this.

I'm a female workaholic as is my husband. We have kids. I do it because I love the job. I get a huge amount of satisfaction out of the job. My kids all have sen and its incredibly monotonous.