Sex Comes First by Joel D. Block

Author:Joel D. Block
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: epub, ebook
Publisher: F+W Media
Published: 2009-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Work Ways and Woes

There is no doubt that work is an integral part of any partnership — the kind you do for a paycheck and the kind you invest in a relationship. And it's great if you are devoted to both, but there must be a balance or your professional and personal life will simultaneously suffer. However, professional success does not automatically doom an individual to an overworked existence with a depressing personal life. In fact, partners who both excel in the workplace can still enjoy a rich personal life in spite of their demanding jobs, but it doesn't happen without effort.

Research done at Cornell University by sociologist Phyllis Moen found that overworked couples working more than 45 hours per week reported the lowest quality of life among working couples. Couples where both partners were launching or establishing themselves in their careers also reported high degrees of stress, overload, and conflict between their work and personal life. Individuals in relationships who wished they were working less also reported a high degree of unhappiness with their situation.

However, those couples who both worked normal full-time hours (39 to 45 hours/week), but not longer, reported the highest quality of life, even higher than when one partner worked part-time. What this study indicates is that couples in “new-millennium” relationships in which both put in about the same amount of time on their jobs and neither works long hours are the ones that tend to have the highest degree of life satisfaction. Perhaps it's because they work to live, not live to work. Still, only about 24 percent of workers in dual-earner couples follow this strategy. Why is this? Well, contemporary working couples are traversing uncharted territory as they struggle to figure out the changing composition of the workforce and the division of family labor. Perhaps they underestimate what it takes to maintain a vibrant love relationship.

Even if a couple does tend towards a more traditional model where one partner works and the other stays home, there can still be situations where work gets in the way of a couple's relationship, especially if one partner is working longer than full-time hours while the other stays home to take care of their children. In fact, working couples with children at home are the most likely to have one adult — most typically the male partner — working more than forty-five hours a week, while the other partner works full-time. You can see how this scenario would leave precious little time during the week for promoting connectedness between partners. What's more, the distinction of their roles may also create a gulf between them. Pursuing a career and bringing up a child are two very different activities and unless there is good communication a couple may find themselves existing alone together.

The bottom line is that work, professional or domestic, takes up an inordinate amount of one's waking hours and may result in a couple living two separate lives while under the same roof. Accordingly, work can get in

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