I’m a guy who has been dating a woman for several months. She is self-employed and I swear about 20% of our conversations is her explaining all the things she has to do every day that may prevent her from being able to commit to seeing me. She swears she just got backed up on things and she’ll become more available, but I see her inventory continuing to grow, not shrink. She is also constantly supervising people on a variety of house projects (mutual disinterest in me getting involved there).
So I decided to ask the internet (DuckDuckGo (DDG) specifically): Am I dating a workaholic? What I found surprised me. I imagined I’d find a bunch of stupid little Cosmo-style quizzes, with the understanding that the reader would find out they were dating an workaholic and leave the relationship. Instead what I found was article after article after article with titles like,
- How to Date a Workaholic: 8 Steps (with Pictures)
- Dating a Workaholic (13 Tips to Make It Work)
- 12 Tips to Cope when Dating a Workaholic
The internet is assuming I WANT to date a workaholic.
Contrast that with results to the question Am I dating someone emotionally unavailable? DDG more straightforwardly answer the question (“17 Signs Someone is Emotionally Unavailable”) with a sprinkling of advice for how to cope.
I see workaholism as basically identical to emotional unavailability, but obviously it’s treated differently by society (maybe because it comes with money and home repairs?). So what is going on? Would you date a workaholic?
Imagine someone who talks about work all the time.
Personally, I couldn’t do it. I understand if they are working hard to survive or provide for children/family, but when you don’t have those obligations you really have to choose whether you want such a demanding career or a relationship. It’s just not fair to the other partner, regardless of how much money they’re bringing in.
Some folks are looking for that though, they just want someone to give them money and mostly leave them alone by working all the time.
They have different definition of happiness and typically are looking for material comfort more than romantic fulfillment. Like, their ideal relationship is someone who works 80 hours a week, and they only spend time together on vacations and such and the working person pays all the bills for them.
This is definitely a gendered dynamic. I’d feel like a freeloading piece of shit doing that, and I’d have plenty of social support in feeling that way.
fwiw I know one couple where the guy is the freeloader. but his entire life he has been that way, he never once had a job and before his wife paid his bills his parents paid for them until he was like 35. and she is a workaholic who makes about 400K a year, just like his parents…
but yeah that’s NOT the norm, typically it’s the other way. #1 complain of women in dating is men don’t make enough to be providers for them anymore.
I haven’t seen that in any list of complaints about men, but I’m sure the women who are looking to be tradwives are having a harder time. That said, the results for “am I dating someone cheap?” does not include any coping tips (to put it mildly).
First off, IMO it’s possible to be a workaholic and emotionally available. But it’s also possible to be both.
For me the question would be: why is she a workaholic? I’ve known and know a number of different workaholics. There are those who genuinely just enjoy work - but then, those are the ones who tend to also be emotionally available. Then, there are those who want to see themselves as important, possibly with some narcissism sprinkled in (definitely avoid that). Then, there are those who are control freaks, not able or not trusting enough to delegate work to others. At that point the question becomes why they don’t delegate enough and what can be done there. Then, there are those who are workaholics in possibly the most literal sense of the word - they’re having difficulties, often mentally, and they’re using work as a distraction.
Going from there, the question would be: how important is she to you? How open is she to finding a solution? The most important thing is to talk about it, which it seems you have. But a part of that conversation has to be: what specifically will she change to improve the situation (and, possibly, what can you do to improve the situation)? “It will get better” is not enough. “I’ll be handing X off to person Y, and I’m having him trained so he can take over starting Z” would be an example of an a concrete improvement. And if as soon as one thing is handed off the next comes on the plate, you have to look at what can be done to avoid the next things coming onto the plate. That is, assuming the whole thing isn’t too much for you. It’s completely legitimate to say, “I can’t have a relationship like this, it will tear me apart”.
Can I also suggest “she’s a workaholic cause she needs the money”?
Yup, completely forgot about that one.
Being self employed is a bit rough in that respect
This isn’t a direct answer, but from your other comments, I think it’s useful advice.
Talk to a therapist about this. If you don’t have one, find one. You sound unhappy in your relationship. Sometimes that’s strictly a relationship problem, but often there’s personal work that needs to be done. Doing that personal work might help you be happy in your current relationship or it might help you leave that relationship and transition to something better.
I am the workaholic in my marriage, it’s tougher on my wife then myself.
I’m self employed, and am only working to improve our lives. Obviously people have different needs in a relationship but i don’t think it’s a deal breaker.
I find a solid work ethic and goals to be attractive. Someone who is content to just muddle through life with no real aspirations, beyond going home to watch TV after work or goals that are so far out of reach they won’t be attained is frustrating to me.
I think you’re mixing being ambitious or driven with being a workaholic. If your wife was an actual workaholic, you’d almost never see her.
I’m the workaholic, I haven’t seen my wife for more then 5 hours in the last week unfortunately. Start work before she’s up and get home when she’s already in bed.
I’ve been at home for 6 hours in the last two days and they were spent showering and sleeping while she was asleep already.
But we make it work
I see workaholism as basically identical to emotional unavailability
Pretty sure workaholics don’t see it that way. And that seems like a fairly inevitable conflict point if you’re dating someone who works a lot. Your opinion seems clear, you don’t want to date a workaholic.
Myself, I would probably have some of the same problems you have. Not sure if I’d want to be with someone who is routinely unavailable. But there it’s a trade off, people need a job, I’m sure I’d tolerate it to a point. Not sure where that breaking point would be specifically. I’ve noticed people who are workaholics usually have a work hard phase then a play hard phase, where they spend a bunch of money and own a bunch of random toys. Even though they’re usually only available like 3 days a month to use them. I’m not as much of a ‘big splurge purchase’ kind of person. So not sure that personality type would do well with me.
She doesn’t have any toys, really, just an expensive house she is constantly paying people to maintain. That is definitely a choice, though for her it seems to be necessity. She showed me her tax bill, as if to say, “See why I have to work so hard?” Her “play hard” is hanging out with her grandkids.
I’m happy with a condo and apartment life and living simply and cheaply so I can enjoy my life. Shit, I’d love for a girlfriend to move in so we could split the rent! The reality is she probably needs the house to justify her workaholism.
She doesn’t seem to be aware of nor interested in a different lifestyle. You clearly cannot jive together, and I think her attitude is wrong because she keeps bringing it up to justify it, like it’s a major point of emotional insecurity for her (or else she wouldn’t mention it half as much) that you clearly don’t have to and shouldn’t need to put up with. Get outta there already!
I think you’re in a unique type of hell here. The thing about small-medium sized business owners is that they can either tired themselves to the bone or not… it’s ultimately a choice, and she would be so much healthier (mental and physical) if she took the choice to release her workload. Any good business needs failsafes; she needs someone under her to manage the hectic stuff. Once you’re past startup phase you can’t allow your business to halt on account of one key worker taking a sick day or being overworked. Your girlfriend is that key staff member in her business, she’s made herself take all the burden. No more!
Anyway, would I personally date a workaholic? My first response was “Absolutely. I’d enjoy making it my job to help them take the edge off from work and relax again.” However, what you present is soooooooo so so more extreme than my idea of a workaholic. So now I just feel embarrassed. Hope your partner can have a less hectic work life soon (in a positive sense. Begone, monkeys paw!)
She’s been off the ground for several years… it is ultimately a choice. I get not wanting to endanger relationships, etc., but she chooses to NOT do things for business reasons (too far to drive, not enough money, too much hassle, etc.), so she could also choose to NOT do things for personal reasons.
She’s also got a pretty decent pension from her work and from her last marriage; I don´t know the details of her financials, but I’m guessing she has options, especially if she wants to downsize.
Your scenario of “taking the edge off work” sort of implies you see them regularly, maybe at the end of the day. That would be fine with me, too. She doesn’t hate her work at all, though.
Maybe suggest a business consultant for her to assess how she can restructure the business to be less dependent on her labour
If she wanted to work less, she could. She just doesn’t want to.
I’m leaning on the Ase side so it obviously wouldn’t bother me as much as others, but I also generally don’t engage in relationships unless I’m confident in my ability to support both parties.
Workaholic is just a tight framing around priorities. Someone who focuses too much on work is ordering their priorities in a certain way. All the excuses in the word don’t change that.
Every time they spend their time on their job, it’s a decision to not spend that time on something or someone else.
Maybe that’s critical to their long term survival. Maybe it’s not. Maybe they are chasing success and will reach it. Or not. Maybe they’re doing that because their parents were like that and it’s learned behaviour.
But it doesn’t matter. People don’t really change that much in the long term. Don’t stick around because you think they will “improve”. This is who she is. If you’re ok with that, set your expectations appropriately. If not, make a hard decision sooner rather than later.
They seem like someone you wouldn’t dig.
I think to me it would depend on what that work was and the person’s attitude towards it. I dated a doctor who complained a lot about how her hospital was making her see too many patients, how the patients were rude to her, and how she had to spend her “free time” at home on paperwork she didn’t have time to do while at work. I was not happy feeling like I was less important to her than a job she didn’t even enjoy. I might have felt otherwise if she absolutely loved her job. (She did see being a doctor as an important duty, and when we talked about this she was hurt that I saw it as a negative because from her point of view it was an example of how she was loyal and dedicated.)
What they say: “Here are the reasons I can’t see you today.”
What we hear: “Here is a long list of things that are all more important to me than you are.”I’m just cutting her off now mid-sentence. “Can you make it for 3:30 today? Yes or no? If no, when can you make it?”
Probably not going to last long at this rate.
But yeah, definitely within the realm of personal choice, as far as psychology allows.
its hard to comment on relationships unless your in it. You have to assess your own feelings. I don’t really know if I was dating and looking for a relationship how I would react to an alcoholic. If you are not seeing someone often though I can’t see the relationship progressing.
It’s up to you. Thing is, when a relationship is this young and she can’t find time, she’s not going to ever find time. The norm is getting (has gotten) established that you are a low priority and are OK with this, so she can show up only on the rare occasions she wants to. If you really were happy with this, whatever, but you do not seem happy with this. Do you have specific reasons for wanting to keep on with the relationship?
She is literally the only person in my life right now. I tried for 2 years to make some kind of friends, but none of them worked out. You´d think I´d have been happy to have a girlfriend, but honestly I just felt a huge disappointment: another person that is going to fill my world and then leave. Though, to her credit, she is absolutely not filling my world.
Ouch, sorry to hear that. It’s harder to evaluate a relationship in such a context. Though, like you said, she’s barely there so… maybe that helps since it’s not too different from not being in a relationship anyway. I hope you have better luck going forward.
I’ve been doing some processing and realizing though she is unreliable and has a lot of committments, a bigger problem for me is that I kind don’t know what to do with romance at this point in my life. I guess I don’t believe in it anymore. I’m kind of OK being who I am in my life and I don’t want to play games of pretending to be something I’m not for someone else. I think that after you’ve had several romantic partners who mostly disappear, you start to wonder if this romance thing isn’t just entirely transactional, and at a high cost.
No.
Save yourself the grief. You have a right to be happy and date someone who makes you happy. Not someone who will always choose their job over you.
So I decided to ask the internet (DuckDuckGo (DDG) specifically): Am I dating a workaholic?
Why are you asking a search engine questions like it’s an AI?
Like you could phrase it as a question:
How to tell if dating workaholic
Or keywords:
Dating workaholic
Or even get fancy and use boolen operators…
But this:
Am I dating a workaholic?
How the fuck is a search engine going to answer that question? It can’t, it’ll just just throw up random articles
There’s nothing deeper than that here
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All your different search suggestions return similar results, so that’s not all that’s happening here.
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A different TOPIC returned different results.
Maybe you need to re-evaulate your whole thing regarding this issue. Search engines have gotten much smarter at being dumb in the past 10 years. Like if you are every troubleshooting anything but THE MOST common issue, you are absolutely fucked.
Never mind the fact DDG actually has an AI option.
I’d rather do my own research, thanks.
Agreed. However, I was addressing their complaint:
Why are you asking a search engine questions like it’s an AI?
They had no way of knowing whether you used DDG’s AI option, so this complaint is invalid on its face.
Buddy…
I’m sorry, I didn’t know I had to break it down like this…
Am I dating a workaholic?
How will a search engine be able to reply with a yes/no?
It can’t.
Like if you are every troubleshooting anything but THE MOST common issue, you are absolutely fucked.
It’s because of what you’re typing into them…
Best of luck, hopefully someone else offers up their time to help you, I have a feeling this isn’t going to be the only time, and I’m never even going to see any of your other posts now.
Think he wanted quizzes and articles. And reddit posts, for instance - testimony. It makes sense to me, because those 3 things are qualitative and anecdotal and thus provide more of a human interaction feel. What OP ultimately needed was to talk it over with people.
Well, since that guy’s blocked me, is there anything wrong with asking a question of a search engine? Two things are:
- SEO might optimize for the questions the site answers.
- It doesn´t matter how you phrase it, search engines today pull you towards the same results from an average of your keywords. I’ve gotten really frustrated trying to filter search results the way I used to do because all the results are the same no matter what I try.
I wasn’t particularly looking for testimony–that’s what I’m getting here–more a nuanced description of workaholism because she’s self-employed and that makes things a little hazier than someone who is “forced” to be at the office for 60 hours a week.
Nothing wrong with how you worded it. But you could also try adjusting your query to tailor your results. For example if you wanted to get quizzes, etc.
Your dearly won advice from 2003 will be sorely missed.
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Give a man a break 🫠
