What's more important your job or your "life"?

A relationship that involves ultimatums is life-destroying in its own way

Hmm, I sense a subtext to this question.

My life is more important in a life/death situation. If my job was causing tensions in my private life I would have to work out why this is - the tensions could well be related to something else but the job pressures would be getting the blame. But if it really was the job, and it really was love then the job would have to go.

The job, if the relationship was worth it. The only problem would be where I was contracted into a job which I can't get out of without suffering a nasty breach of contract claim.

I'm not even going to go into what happened to me today.

well obviously this is connected to a personal situation here, but i'll answer it generally. for me, my personal life is always more important than my job.

Taking the nasty male habit of compartmentalising everything to an extreme, I like to separate relationships from my personal life

If I left my job, I wouldn't HAVE a personal life as I'd be too busy trying to find another job, and more importantly hunt for a new apartment since my company owns my building and I'm staying there contingent on me working at the company. Quite frankly, my own personal experience has shown that men who have had problems with my various jobs were either insecure fuckfaces who couldn't handle a strong woman, or insecure men who were jealous of me having a good time with people at work because I apparently wasn't allowed to have any friends. Neither is a relationship worth saving, so I'd take my job right now.

Uh-oh. Sounds like Paul's having an Egg at his office. I think it's a big quandary, esp. with law where there needs to be less shits doing the job because of all the people who genuinely need recourse to the law, and the whole breach thing. Do you have a get-out clause where you can avoid a breach situation due to unreasonable behaviour on the part of your employers? Or do those rules protect everyone except for trainee lawyers?

Kate, I know the situation is driving you nuts but it's not gonna get better through issuing ultimata. Try to hang in there and book a holiday after the tour so the two of you have time to enjoy each other again.

What relationship?

It strikes me that you are on a loser asking this question of a forum whose membership spend their entire working lives posting to it. Nobody here is actually going to say "job".

I mean, I automatically thing "wow yeah my relationship is loads more important". But if I got offered a Dream Job in, say, Sydney and Isabel didnt want to go....that would actually be a much tougher call. Because as somebody said upthread ultimatums are always false choices - the ultimatum-giver is pretending they ARENT making a choice by presenting a dramatic choice to somebody else.

No, no, you are misunderstanding. It is not an ultimatum question. I t is a "which part of your life do *you* consider more important?

If a job was wrecking your life, destroying your relationships, etc. would *YOU* say "fuck this job" or would you say "fuck the rest of my life"?

Oh well OK, sorry Kate, yes that seems to me to be a no-brainer *on an abstract level*. If something is fucking your life up then you should get rid of it. BUT of course this is easier said than done whether that something is a job, a relationship, an addiction, etc. etc.

Tom totally did not read my answer, which was I'd pick the job, "nobody would say job is more important" my ass :P

I *KNOW* my job is killing me. I get less than 5 hours of sleep a night no matter when I go to sleep thanks to insomnia, I am getting self-esteem issues, I frequently suffer from stress or exhaustion- related illnesses, from shingles (or the pox) to heart problems to mental illness. I'm also losing my relationship, I never have any free time, and sometime I think I'm actually losing my mind because of what I do for a living.

BUT... I'm on a contract. If I break it, I have to repay all of my training costs (£10,000) plus damages for breach. I also have my student loans to pay off, and there is a bit of pressure to do my job from my parents.

So I know my job is destroying my life, and I want to choose my life over my job, but I simply cannot. I don't have a choice. And believe me, this is worse than not having the courage to leave. Courage, yes. Resources, sadly no.

If I felt myself unable (for whatever reason) of leaving the destructive job you describe, Kate, I think I would look to the relationship for a (probably unreasonable degree of) understanding and indulgence. If that turned out to be unforthcoming then I would probably look askance at the relationship.

I think my position on this is probably very questionable, but it's the way I would behave.

Depends on the job I guess but its a question everyone must asnwer for them self. I'd quit this job but I might not quit being a producer or recourding artist. (when I become one)

Paul, jack the job in and declare yourself bankrupt. (Financially and morally if you want). Okay you won't be able to be a company director again but they won't get a penny out of you. Make sure you put all your possessions in Kate's name though.

Anything given or put into someone else's name 2 years prior to becoming bankrupt can be seized by your trustee in bankruptcy and given to your creditors. That won't work.

Sell it to her then, for a massively reduced price - though I fear there is probably a great reason why this won't work either....

That's 'sale at an undervalue'... won't work either.

There's always the French Foreign Legion

Insomnia, I can cure: get someone to rub the balls of your feet HARD and massage shoulders using a few drops of lavender oil. Do the feet thing last. Makes my lights go RIGHT out.

Paul, is there fine print which saves you from unreasonable treatment/ people in job, ie. you feel you have no choice but to leave?

Heh. I do that to Kate and she falls asleep! I took massage classes at college, which mean I'm pretty good at that sort of thing. My insomnia is more a problem of falling asleep and then BAM! waking up at 5am.

My employment contract is useless. No get-outs, no concessions. I feel like a chattel, like something bought out.

Everyone, if you're going to ballboy tonight please be supportive of Kate who's been lumbered with everything I should be doing. I don't know when I'll be there, though I may storm out of the office...

ooooo paul com eround to my oil pit ... i desire hands on my budy

That's the answer. I'll quite this job and make enough money to pay them back from being a masseur. I can get cards printed to put in phone boxes and everything...

My job is my life. I am aiming for that 80s yuppie lifestyle. If anyone knows where to find those 200 kilo mobile phones, send me a fax.

I'd probably wig out and leave both.

MY LIFE !
thats why i dont have a real job.

My job as summer student is to sit on a baseball diamond for the rest of the corporate team and read specs.

Well, I'll go with Ally and say "job" because, well, really... it's never *really* love and even if it is, it's usually fleeting at some point, and even if it doesn't: WHO REALLY GIVES A FUCK? I have a great girlfriend that I spend all my time with-- it's nice to have someone who's apparantly open and honest and doesn't mind you being a jackass. But, I'm starting to believe it may be a "frame of mind" type thing. Like, when you don't have a girlfriend, you sorta feel like a jerk or loser until you get that next girlfriend, OR become a perpetual dater. Either works for company in the right mindset.

If you love your job, I assume you love your coworkers, too. YOUR JOB IS WHERE YOU SPEND 65% of your LIFE! YOUR JOB REALLY IS YOUR LIFE-- IF YOU LOVE IT, KEEP THAT FUCKING THING. Ever had a job you don't love? It becomes disklike and then HATE very quickly.

Oh yeah-- and that's no way to LIVE.

Screw the bank! Screw the bank I work for! *dancing like Bruce McCullogh* Screw the bank!

Bruce McCulloch I mean! I knew that didn't look right...

I'm a trash collector, btu I love it

I want to become a librarian. Then my job will be part of my life.

If you define yourself in terms of your job, then your job is your life. On that basis, job takes priority over relationship. If a job is just something you do to live by, then you can split the question. As many people have sensibly pointed out, the job or relationship decision depends on factors in both and cannot be reduced to an either / or. Perhaps both need to go, or both need to be revised. I've chosen option 1 at the moment. But I wouldn't get involved in a relationship without establishing that my partner knew that this was the case. Ideally, they would have the same priorities as me.

Paul, you said : I *KNOW* my job is killing me. I get less than 5 hours of sleep a night no matter when I go to sleep thanks to insomnia, I am getting self-esteem issues, I frequently suffer from stress or exhaustion- related illnesses, from shingles (or the pox) to heart problems to mental illness. I'm also losing my relationship, I never have any free time, and sometime I think I'm actually losing my mind because of what I do for a living. BUT... I'm on a contract. If I break it, I have to repay all of my training costs (£10,000) plus damages for breach. I also have my student loans to pay off, and there is a bit of pressure to do my job from my parents.

I can empathise totally with your situation. Up until a year ago I did a job for 3 years in which I was totally overwhelmed with work, most of which I didn't have the training to deal with efficiently. I never wanted the job in the first place, as I'm not at all ambitious. My boss was ineffectual and dumped everything on me to make his life easier, whilst the other senior staff were basically just brutes who enforced their agenda through threats and fear. My personal life disappeared - I had no time for myself, my marriage suffered horribly and my relationship with my kids was non-existent. I was expected to give up weekends at the drop of a hat to work. I was regularly phoned at home at all hours of the weekend and told to do something or else. They even made me come into work on the day that I moved house last March!I spent half my life in airport and on planes. I had to lie about where I was going on holiday so they couldn't find me. Probably the worst feeling was the perpetual rising panic which stemmed from ALWAYS having too many things to do - I'd wake in the night and compulsively write lists of tasks on scraps of paper so that I wouldn't forget them. Whatever I was doing, or wherever I was I'd always be mentally 'somewhere else' planning the next task. This applied to what was left of my home life was well as work. My health suffered, I never had enough sleep etc etc. Instead of a £10K training fee to pay back, I guess my handcuffs were/are the need to pay the mortgage/look after my family.

I got the situation under control by standing up to senior management, gradually reducing my working hours, simply ignoring some of their requests, telling them I couldn't travel as much due to personal commitments. Basically the worst they could do would be to fire me - in the event they demoted me to a position of less responsibility. Jackpot!

Anyway Paul, you HAVE TO DO SOMETHING! This you know already. You've got to somehow unravel the whole situation into a series of manageable questions. It sounds like whether or not you want to do Law in the future, you have to complete this contract. How long is there to go? If it's a year or two the only way you'll make it to the end with sanity and health intact is to DO LESS STUFF. Tough as it may sound you have to clear some time in your life when you don't HAVE to do anything. That may mean giving up the Club or DJ-ing or whatever until the end. If you're involved in running a club you're giving your time to others, no matter how much fun it is, rather than making time for yourself. You've got to get off the treadmill. Is it sheer weight of work and deadline pressure which makes it so unbearable? What happens if you simply don't do all the work they dump on you? Remember if you don't have reasonable time to complete work it's THEIR PROBLEM, not yours. They run the place, let them worry about it.

I'm not any kind of legal expert, but I would I can't believe that there's no way out of this contract on health grounds, if that's possible. It sounds like you've had some quite serious illnesses and the way you're living means that it's inevitable that you're storing up more. Have you got a Dr. you can trust? Maybe get written off for a few weeks whilst you clear your head. Don't feel guilty about putting YOUR health first - get well and f@ck the work. Again - it's THEIR work, THEIR problem if you're not around to do it. Or can you somehow transfer your 'traineeship' to another firm, perhaps where it's more bearable. Is that possible? All the best.

Wow, I forgot about all this horror. Did things get better for Paul.

[thread revived thanks to ILEWHACKING