Why should love be more like work

And yet, they seem to exist in parallel dimensions of our lives. Love is all emotion, whereas work is all reason. Or is it? Are we missing a huge opportunity by failing to transfer learnings from one field to the other? Should love be more like work, and vice-versa? Consider these two examples of every couple’s romantic life:

1. Moving in together

Imagine you and your partner have decided to move in together for the first time. Would you rather:

1. Go to Ikea together and search for a couch that you both like and both can pay;

2. Sit down together for one hour before going to the store and come up with a common concept of what your couch should be like and how you’re going to pay for it.

I bet you chose the first option, even if you have already been through major fights over style, comfort or budget notions in the couches aisle of a furniture store. We tend to avoid discussing practical issues with our partners. It just doesn’t feel romantic. The problem with this approach is that, because we don’t set a common agreement over those topics, we tend to expect our partners to behave as we would. And that will most probably not be the case.

Now think about what happens at work. Can you imagine working for a company that has no rules on how to spend money? Where employees decide to go on holidays without coordinating with their colleagues? Rules have to be laid out to let people know what’s expected from them.

In 2016 Mark Manson was about to get married and decided to crowdsource relationship advice from his readers. Almost 1.500 people replied and one of the top recommendations was to create relationship rules, ranging from “To what degree will you share finances?” to “How do you decide which vacations to go on?”. Companies create rules because CEOs can’t afford to expect employees to behave as they would. As should we, in our love lives.

2. The first anniversary

Let’s go back to our little quiz. Imagine your partner keeps doing something that deeply annoys you. You have been giving all sorts of hints that you disapprove of this behavior, but nothing seems to change. Today is your first anniversary and you’ve decided to go out on a romantic dinner. Would you rather:

1. Introduce the topic over dinner;

2. Let it slide and talk about it another day.

This time I would be willing to bet that you went for the second option. Nobody wants to ruin a romantic dinner with an unpleasant topic. But guess what, your partner will probably have the exact same behavior during dinner. Or after. Or even on the way there. And this time you will be even more annoyed, because it was supposed to be a special moment. So you will come down harder on your partner for not understanding you and for ruining the celebration that you were trying to preserve.

How would a similar situation be addressed at work? If someone kept missing deadlines and showing up late for meetings in a way that affected the team’s results, for example, the topic would be tactfully addressed in a performance review. Companies have formal feedback procedures to make sure that misaligned behaviour doesn’t go unattended. And that feedback is sensitive enough to keep workers motivated. This, according to the Book of Life, is one of the reasons why work is so much easier than love: “Reviews are steeped in a culture of tact. One rather tough remark has to be wrapped in at least seven compliments. Work culture knows that people don’t improve and can’t take new ideas on board if they are feeling threatened and humiliated.”

How can our love lives benefit from this process? Check out this idea from Mark Manson’s experiment:

One person even said that she and her husband have “annual reviews” every year. She immediately told me not to laugh, but that she was serious. They have annual reviews where they discuss everything that’s going on in the household that they like and don’t like and what they can do in the coming year to change it. This sort of stuff sounds lame but it’s what keeps couples in touch with what’s going on with each other. And because they always have their fingers on the pulse of each other’s needs, they’re more likely to grow together rather than grow apart.

Think about your own experience.

What learnings from the work context could be transferred to your love life?

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This is the first of a series of articles intended to dive into the not so obvious relationships between love and work. The second one, Not ready to commit to a job? Here’s why, explores lessons learned in the romantic field that can help us find a job we love.