Striking the perfect work-life balance may sound like a fantasy for a career-driven boss like yourself, but when your job starts to threaten your relationships and well-being, it’s time to make some real-life changes.

Stress makes a love mess

If your nine-to-five is ratcheting up your anxiety levels, prepare to kiss your health and love life goodbye. Not only does excessive stress cause heart and blood pressure problems, obesity and diabetes, it also affects your sleep and mental health, which means less intimate time, shorter fuses and more bickering. Not exactly an ideal set-up for romance… 

Work it out together 

To protect your relationship, Jon Beaty of The Gottman Institute, a research-based marriage and family organisation of therapists, suggests starting by identifying the specific stressors affecting you. Then talk about this with your partner, unpacking how stress has been affecting your emotions and relationship. Other steps include getting more socially connected, making the changes needed to practice self-care and reduce stress, and setting goals with your partner to help you achieve a better lifestyle. 

Not tonight dear, I’m working (again)

We aren’t talking about occasionally working late to chase a deadline. We mean compulsive overworking or ‘workaholism’, where sufferers aren’t able to disconnect from work – ever. In a comprehensive study, ‘The Impact of Workaholism on Personal Relationships’, researchers found that workaholism doesn’t only take a toll on your health,but also your relationships: Workaholics never have time to build or nurture relationships and tend to use their significant others as stress buffers. Constantly venting to your love will eventually take its toll. 

Stop running away

Clinical psychologist and author Susan Heitler says that workaholism is a form of escape: ‘Often, it’s from marital or other relationship problems, [but it] could also be loneliness, financial fears, school or some other dark arena in your life that feels toyou genuinely insurmountable.’Start by exploring what you might be trying to escape with the help of a qualified counsellor and practice setting up time boundaries around how much you work. 

Job satisfaction and depression

According to a meta-analyses on job satisfaction and health by the Manchester Business School, current trends in employment conditions are ‘eroding levels of job satisfaction’ and ‘directly damaging the physical and mental health of employees’. This is bad news, considering we spend a whopping 50% of our waking hours at work during the week, not including commuting times. And if your job is giving you the blues, it becomes a problem for everyone in the family. When job dissatisfaction turns to depression, sufferers start withdrawing from loved ones, losing interest in sex and affection, and even the capacity to care for  their dependents. 

Deal with the black dog

You can’t always change your job, but you can manage how you respond to it. Counselling is the top option to help you deal with your feelings around your circumstances, but the South African Depression and Anxiety Group also suggests letting loved ones in on your experiences, eating a balanced diet, avoiding alcohol, doing volunteer work, exercising and keeping a journal.Be patient and kind to yourself. Remember that depression is not your fault and is not something you can overcome with willpower alone. Treatment is necessary for depression, just like for any other illness.

Killer commutes

Studies suggest that long work commutes mean lower subjective well-being and even increase the odds of divorce. The stress of sitting in traffic and the guilt of spending more time away from your partner when it comes to long-distance commuting are rarely mitigated by a pay cheque.

Words by Lena Sotherin
Photography: Pexels