Wedded To Work

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Luba loved her job. as a systems analyst for a large software company in Silicon Valley, she was part of a team of men and women who developed computer programs. The pressure was intense: Luba worked 12-hour days, plus weekends on her laptop. But the middle-aged wife and mother found the work fascinating. She liked her colleagues and became deeply involved in their lives. After three years, however, Luba was suddenly reassigned to another group. Although the transfer involved more pay and responsibility, she felt she had been ripped away from a life she cherished. She suffered shortness of breath, headaches and tingling in her hands. Luba's doctor advised her to seek psychotherapy. She told her therapist that her life had "no meaning." She said, "I feel like a shell of a person. There's nothing left."

Luba (not her real name) is one of nearly 200 patients whom psychologist Ilene Philipson has treated for overinvestment in work and whose experiences inform Philipson's provocative new book, Married to the Job: Why We Live to Work and What We Can Do About It. A resident of Oakland, Calif., Philipson, 52, describes how Americans' love affair with work might be great for corporate productivity but can have terrible personal consequences. Her book is well timed, with millions of Americans newly laid off and millions more working harder than ever to pick up the slack. "In giving it all to our jobs, we are running a great risk," she writes. "As Americans are working longer hours and investing emotionally in our jobs, we are simultaneously depleting our lives beyond work ... When work fails — through a betrayal, rupture or layoff — employees who have given it all often find there is nothing to fall back on."

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Americans spend more time at work than anyone else in the industrialized world. And then there are the hours spent on what Philipson calls "electronic leashes": e-mail, laptops, cell phones. "Formerly, personal success was evinced by the ability to not work, to be a part of a leisure class, to be idle," Philipson writes. "Today, we measure our success by how much we work." Philipson's clients say they work long hours not just to make more money. They are seeking recognition, self-esteem or a sense of belonging.

Philipson believes that overattachment to the workplace disproportionately afflicts women. "A lot of women I've seen have traded the anticipation of having security emotionally and economically through marriage to having security through work." While women make up two-thirds of her cases, they account for 85% of the work obsessed. Some of her patients were working until midnight without extra pay, bringing in food for their co-workers and vacuuming their own offices.

How can you tell if you're married to your job? Philipson suggests that you imagine quitting your current job and experiencing what that would feel like. If you feel terrified and alone and without direction, it's time to consider stepping back. Philipson recommends trying to leave work at a specific time each day, establishing limits on checking business e-mail and voice mail after hours, and taking restorative vacations.

So what about Philipson's own work habits? "I was totally married to my job," she says. "For most of the '90s, I was working about 55 hours a week. I realized, in part from listening to my patients, that my life wasn't that different from theirs." She reduced her work hours to 26 a week. "It really made me confront how I wanted to live my life. I had to reconnect." Is she happier now? "I'm getting married soon — to a man, rather than my job."