Dear Erica: WORKING TO LIVE WHILE MY BOYFRIEND WORKS TO THE POINT OF SELF-DESTRUCTION

Jun 26

Dear Erica, WORKING TO LIVE WHILE MY BOYFRIEND WORKS TO THE POINT OF SELF-DESTRUCTION is also discussed in depth during Episode #43 of This Is Your Strange and Beautiful Life: How to Be a Writer with Kyle Stevenson. You can listen here or on all your favourite podcast platforms!

Dear Erica,

I'm 37 and one year into a relationship with a dude who I hope will be my forever boyfriend. We met at a concert we both had VIP tickets to. It was the most magical and romantic meet-cute. At the time, we lived about four hours apart, but we decided to keep in touch, since we both had friends and family and reasons to visit our respective cities. For about six months, we regularly spent weekends and vacations together and overall, it was wonderful. Though he often seemed busy with work, he would make time for some of the most incredible sex of my life.

At around the sixth month stage, I had to make a decision about where I wanted to do my Masters. There were great options in both my city, and his, but given the budding relationship, I decided to take the leap and leave town so I could study and live closer to my bf. I didn't see this as "moving for love." We haven't moved in together (yet), and I sublet my old apartment so that I can always go back. But we were both really excited about the idea of living in the same city.

Flash forward, and I'm a semester into my program, and worried that the magic is starting to fade. I’m blaming this on my boyfriend’s job. My boyfriend and I hang out every weekend, and spend maybe two or three nights a week together. I'm busy with my school, but it's manageable. I'm still able to work out, see my friends, and have a mostly balanced life. I would not say the same about my boyfriend. Soon after I moved, my boyfriend got a big promotion and it feels like his job has taken over his life. He checks his messages the moment he wakes up all the way to bedtime. He’s at the beck and call of his buzzing phone. It's rare that he seems present when we're together. He doesn't reserve any time to self-care, or even regular meals. He refuses to eat at the office because he says it makes him tired. Then at the end of the day, he'll gorge himself on takeout and zones out in front of his videogames until he falls asleep. So, sex is basically off the table. I know that being busy and tired is part of life, but every time we hang out and he's a shell of a person, I feel disappointed and rejected, not to mention sexually frustrated. If he loved his job, I'd be happier for him and maybe more understanding, but it seems like a toxic workplace. His boss is always yelling at him and everyone else, and people get fired at least once a week. My boyfriend says he wants to stick out the position for at least two more years for financial reasons and company optics. But two years feels like a long time to wait to see if he will come back to life. Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure I want babies, and I've aged into the realm of geriatric uteruses. What should I do?

Love, Working to Live While My Boyfriend Works to the Point of Self-Destruction

Erica Can’t Fix It. But She Has Thoughts.

Dear WTLWMBWTTPOSD,

Oh my goodness, I feel for you! Mismatched priorities in terms of work can become as complicated as mismatched sex drives. And as we've seen with you and your Dream Boat, there's often an overlap.

Like you, and unlike your boyfriend, I am someone who works to live. I think I used up my workaholic gene while I was in high school. At 2 a.m., my esophagus would burn from coffee and bulimia as I typed excruciating sentences about Robertson Davies into my family's gigantic desktop computer. Just a few hours later, I would shackle my wrists and ankles with weights, and run to the nearest small town and back. These days, I am not sure I could pull an all-nighter, or even work past 9 p.m., if you put a gun to my head I am the queen of work-life balance—if your boyfriend wants tips about phone hygiene, sleep hygiene, and morning routines, he should definitely hit me up. But he's not the one writing this letter. You are.

First of all, I think it's beautiful that you did the 37-year-old version of jumping in with two feet. Sure, you kept your apartment, but you believed in the connection and you went for it. At some point, the glittering hormonal magic was going to wear off. The sex was going to wain and veer towards a little less incredible, at least sometimes. And life was going to throw in some curve balls and roadblocks, whether that's an unreasonable job, an unreasonable relative, an unreasonable ex, or something truly terrible like an illness.

A serious, committed, long-term relationship means buying into the aftermath of all these buzz kills. But though a year feels long and cemented, it isn't that long. You're still at the point where you're figuring out, is this my person? Are we compatible? Do we work through this, or do I opt out?

My favourite certified relationship coach Jillian Tureki says that stress is the number one killer of relationships. I think Jillian is wonderful and smart, and I think she is right. It sounds like your boyfriend is doing a rather terrible job at managing his stress. Let's discuss.

I don't know what it is about dudes and eating, but many of them seem to take zero responsibility in terms of how their food choices can affect their bodies. Your body, your choice, sure. But your boyfriend's habits are making intimacy impossible. I can totally see feeling rejected when, at the end of the day, your boyfriend would prefer to gorge himself on hamburgers and dive into a coma of videogames, rather than hitting up you and your many delights. Maybe it is reasonable to not be up for sex eight days a week. It is also reasonable to expect that your loved ones will be mildly conscious when you hang out with them.

I see vast room for improvement when it comes to eating habits that won't leave your boyfriend feeling like a train wreck. But will a more balanced diet inspire him to choose activities other than video games? I know little about video games except that they are incredibly addictive and if my partner chose Minecraft over me, I’d be devastated.

In any case, food is ultra personal, and people eat the way they eat. You can model your excellent food routines, and offer to make him a sandwich every now and then, or wrap muffins and pieces of cheese in aluminum foil. You can text him, “Lunch time, what are you having?” Otherwise, food advice coming from a significant other, this could be tricky. He's your boyfriend and not your child, and you're his partner and not his mother.

Which brings me to a quote from my dear pal and podcast guest Kyle Stevenson who says, "Not every night can be a dinner and a sleepover." Alas. Partners need down time, alone time, and flake-out time, which could entail video games. They need to do the things they did before they met you. They need to keep in touch with their friends. They need to recharge outside of the relationship. They need to not feel as though they haven’t lost themselves. And so do you.

Four-and-a-half months into my last beautiful love story, I felt oversaturated with anxiety about my relationship. My friends showered me with a lovely tapestry of advice, which I have consolidated below.

How to Save Your Relationship—Or At Least Not Die Trying

1. Normalize hard conversations, but limit them to a specific time every week. I remember getting nauseous when Tim Ferris began a serious relationship and announced that he'd hired a relationship coach and committed to weekly relationship check-ins. Trust Tim Ferris to optimize love and wring out any risk of failure and wasted time. But in my old age, I have decided that it is healthy to have a safe container to express both your appreciation and concerns. This prevents irritations from festering, while also limiting the amount of time you spend in relationship management mode. Some people believe that in the early days of the relationship, everything should just flow with beautiful serenity. If your lives and preferences and routines don’t seamlessly blend with your partner’s, then you’re not with the right person. For those of you out there whose lives and preferences and routines are seamlessly blending with your partners with no need for conversation and negotiation, I am thrilled through you. But make sure that nobody’s sucking up their feelings to keep the peace. That said, it’s a drag and a slog to spend your relationship talking about their relationship, so stick to an hour per week as much as possible.

2. Scale back your hangouts, with a focus on quality instead of quantity. Maybe pick a day or two per week, and then another weekend day. The rest of the time, you can work on your schooling, stick to your workouts, do your hobbies, and nourish friendships in your new school. He can stay on top of work, watch bad TV, and do whatever he needs to do to recuperate from what sounds like a stressful period in his life. It's hard to always feel like you have to be on. Sometimes you just need a break. Limiting your time together can also help build desire, so that when you do see each other it's a special treat. Longing might be one of the best drugs out there. Please do not deprive yourself.

3. Commit to six months with this dude. Six months of all-in, working through whatever comes up. Do not let every conflict and concern devolve in a moratorium of the relationship. When you ceaselessly vacillate over whether you’re with the right person, this is largely terrible for your relationship. I get that your fertility concerns raise the stakes here, but I think you will feel better if you know you gave this guy your best shot. Pick a day and put a note in your phone about six months from now. This is when you can take stock on how you are both coping with your stress, whether you feel closer, and whether you feel more at peace with the relationship, just the way it is. Or not.

All that said, you are 37 years old and you've probably developed some idea of what has worked and not worked in terms of compatibility and lifestyle. For me, looking back at my love stories, I have come to realize that I'm not the right girlfriend for someone who lives and dies for their job. Work is a valid and popular way to obtain your self-worth, and I respect this. And yet, and I guess it depends on the job, but I feel like blind devotion to your employer requires a degree of compliance that I struggle not to life coach out of people (despite being somewhat allergic to life coaches other than Oprah’s life coach Martha Beck, and my dear pal Josh).

In response to Dear Erica, My Vision Board Jumped Off a Bridge in 2011, I wrote about the importance of accepting your livelihood, even if it does not necessarily break open and transform your soul. "It is what it is," many people will say at the end of their work weeks, and this is valiant and courageous of them. But I believe there is a limit to how many times you are allowed to repeat “it is what it is,” when "what it is" is truly garbage.

So, before you commit to this dude for another six months, it's completely valid to look back and say, you know what, this isn't it. I don't want to play second fiddle to this guy's job. I don't want to hold my breath to see if he's able to develop better coping skills. I love him, but it feels like there are too many things I would want to change if given the choice, and probably that's not fair to either of us.

Also, if you find that within 15 days of following this advice, you are still consumed with a panicked and anxious feeling most of your days, listen to that. After following this advice for approximately 15 days, my last boyfriend and I broke up. Though I desperately wanted him to be my forever boyfriend, ultimately, we had irreconcilable mismatched priorities in terms of our lifestyles and our expectations for a relationship. It was incredibly devastating, but I got through it. You’ll get through this too, whether this guy turns into your forever boyfriend, or whether you need to hold out for your next beautiful love story. Let me know how it goes. Thank you for writing and reading!

Love, Erica

Send Erica your listener questions to her website or on Instagram @erica.j.schmidt. If you enjoyed this advice column, you might also enjoy Dear Erica, My Vision Board Jumped Off a Bridge in 2011, Why I am Still Single, and Manifest.

Or check out Erica’s podcast This Is Your Strange and Beautiful Life. There’s a listener question at the end of just about every episode. And if you are so inspired, Erica would be most delighted if you could share your favourite blog post and/or podcast interview with your favourite peeps! Thank you so much!

Erica J. Schmidt

Dear Erica: WORKING TO LIVE WHILE MY BOYFRIEND WORKS TO THE POINT OF SELF-DESTRUCTION

Erica Can’t Fix It. But She Has Thoughts.

How to Save Your Relationship—Or At Least Not Die Trying

Dear Erica: MY VISION BOARD JUMPED OFF A BRIDGE IN 2011