Is Job Satisfaction Related to Marital Satisfaction?
If you dislike your job, is it possible that it is going to affect your marriage? Or do you think that you can separate work enough from your home life that it won’t matter? There’s several different ways that job stress can impact your home life, including your marriage.
Mood
The daily grind at a job that isn’t satisfying is going to affect your mood. It’s likely to impact how you feel about getting up in the morning to go to work, how you approach the upcoming work week, and what sort of mood you are going to return home in. If you are feeling anxious, frustrated, overwhelmed, or burned out, it will impact your ability to relate to your spouse. Communication and intimacy may be impacted.
Sleep and Energy
Stress impacts a person’s ability to sleep. When people dislike their work, it can interfere with their sleep cycle. Lack of sleep may interfere with your spouse’s sleep habits. It’s also going to make you less able to deal with stress.
Disliking your job is also likely to impact your energy levels. Being tired of your job can mean you are going to feel tired all the time. It can interfere with a person’s leisure activities and social life. If you come home from work too exhausted to help out around the house or even interact with your spouse, it can lead to a marital disaster.
Support
If you aren’t satisfied at your job, it’s possible you are feeling supported by your boss and co-workers. A lack of support at work may impact you in several different ways. Perhaps you depend more heavily on your spouse for emotional support around job related issues. Or maybe you begin to withdraw from everyone, including your spouse. It is important to have support at work in order to process work related issues at the office.
Coping Strategies
The coping strategies people develop to deal with a difficult job are sometimes not very healthy. Sometimes people turn to drugs and alcohol to deal with work related stress. At other times, people try to become apathetic. This apathy leads to an “I don’t care” attitude so that they can’t stop caring about work and it reduces stress. However, this apathetic attitude can spill over into home life. If you don’t care about your daily tasks at the office, you may become apathetic about your household responsibilities too. Giving up personal pride and sense of accomplishment and satisfaction can cause you to put less effort into your marriage.
Over-Involvement or Under-Involvement with Work
Sometimes people have difficulty setting boundaries between work and home life. Sometimes people feel obligated to continue working after arriving home. And for some jobs, this may be a requirement. Answering emails, text messages, and phone calls during time off can impact a person’s job satisfaction. It is also going to interfere with your marriage. It will make you less available to your spouse and decrease the amount of quality time you spend together.
Other people become under-involved with work when they dislike their job. Some people may experience increased absences on the job when they don’t like what they are doing. People are also at higher risk of quitting their job. This can lead to increased financial stress, which is going to affect your marriage.
What to do About Job Dissatisfaction
If you dislike your job and it is impacting your marriage, it may be time to re-evaluate. Take a look at what contributes to the stress at your job and consider what changes may be able to be made. Consider whether or not you need to stay at your current job. If a change is possible, evaluate your options. If you don’t feel like you can find a new job that will be more satisfying, learn some relaxation skills and coping strategies. Learning new skills can help improve your overall job satisfaction and can help your marriage as well.
