How Does My Love Life Affect My Ability To Work?
You’ve heard of the old research finding that married men live longer than single or divorced men. Of course, that statistic depends upon the quality of their marriages. Nevertheless, I’m going to add my own controversial prediction, drawn from years of clinical experience: if your love life is healthy, single or married, man or woman, you’ll have a more productive work life. As a psychological disability consultant, evaluating people with short-term disability over many years, a disappointing love life, for whateer reason, very often leads to impaired work performance and/or short-term disability leave.
One of the major causes of poor work performance and disabling emotional illness is love life disappointments. Disappointments in love occur as a consequence of unresolved conflicts in a love relationship, a breakup, martial separation, or divorce, and sometimes, the crippling loneliness of trying to live without love in one’s life. Clinically, a disappointing love life can result in reduced motivation, persistent feelings of loss, loneliness, lifestyle disruptions, defensiveness, distractibility, temporary impairments of concentration and focus, displaced sexual behavior into the workplace, abuse of substances to self-medicate emotional pain, and a predisposition to depressive moods, anxiety, and stress related somatic illness.
The reason why this particular cause of mental and physical illness is often recurrent during the average employee’s work life, is because its symptoms are most often the primary focus of treatment, not its root causes. Getting people back to adequate functioning, both in their personal as well as occupational lives, is the major and often the only objective. This is all well and good, but largely incomplete, and inadequate to stop repetition from occuring at some point down the line. If the cause of a person’s repetitive love life disappointments is not consciously recognized and changed, the chances of recurrent diminished work performance and/or temporary psychological disabilities is pretty good. Of course, this spells substantial financial losses and reduced productivity for companies over time.
The solution to this dilemma is not that complicated. My research over more than 35 years has shown me, unequivocably, that love life disappointments reoccur because people unconsiously learn something about love relationships from unhealthy relationship experiences in life that replicate the unhealthy relationship experiences that taught them, now in their adult love lives.
Imagine a Love Life Seminar focused on teaching people how to work on and improve their particular love lives by learning a psychological method proven effective over years of clinical application. A 3-step method that teaches people how to unlearn the unhealthy unconsious learning about love relationships that is responsible for repetitive disappointments in their love lives. I call my method the Unlearning Method. It was created to help single people who are dating and disappointed, single people who avoid dating altogether, separated or divorced individuals, and persons who are married without emotional intimacy in their relationships.
When a person becomes interested in working on their psychological love life, the part of their love life that was unconsciously learned, resides in the mind, and determines the health of their love relationships, the reduction in symptoms and illness related to love life disappointments occurs immediately. But more than that, unlearning unhealthy unconscious learning about love relationships ensures that the person’s future love life experiences will be substantially healthier and more satisfying. This translates into greater and sustained workplace competence and performance, and significantly less short-term disability.
Comments welcome. Share your love life experiences.
Dr. Thomas Jordan, clinical psychologist, interpersonal psychoanalyst, love life consultant, psychological disability consultant, and author of the award-winning book, Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life. Love Life Seminars and telehealth Love Life Consultations available upon request. Contact: 212-875-0154 or drtomjordan@lovelifelearningcenter.com for inquiries.
