Relationships | Kontrary

Real-life disclosures on the myth of work/life balance

I just got off the phone with Zeus, and I’m angry. This isn’t a surprise because I’m quick to anger, quick to forgiveness and quick to just about every emotion, really. The emotional roller coaster of being a woman and all.

Zeus and I have been engaged in phone warfare. Which also isn’t all that surprising considering that he works for a start-up and now I work for a start-up and well, life is busy.

You will understand this even more when I tell you who Zeus is – that is, Zeus is Ryan Healy, co-founder of both Brazen Careerist and Employee Evolution.

Many of you already know this about Zeus being Ryan, but I felt it was time to announce it beyond my About page because of some recent emails I received from my readers.

I feel I have every right to keep my private life private, but I also feel a strong relationship with my blogging community. My blog and the people who support it are the primary reasons I’m successful today, and so it’s important to me to be as transparent as possible.

I didn’t make my relationship with Ryan explicit before because we had just started dating (even now we’re early in the relationship game), and it’s hard enough to begin a relationship, let alone have the extra pressure of so many people watching you. I mean, Ryan and I are both “In a Relationship” on Facebook, but not even explicitly with each other because I’m so superstitious.

(Yeah, you try dating me.)

This is made all the more difficult because like I mentioned, we’re both busy, and I want the career, the relationship, the blog, the time to exercise and hang out with my friends and call my family.

“People that exercise every day and work twelve hours a day have no life,” Ryan reminds me. So, okay. But maybe I could be the exception?

“No, you can’t have it all. Something has to give,” he goes on. Ryan is practical to my impractical. Rational to my emotional. The pea to my pod. He’s a Taurus and I’m a Virgo. He’s an INTJ and I’m an ENFP. By all personality tests and worldly measures we’re a good match.

But sometimes it’s hard to like someone so much and have so much else going on in your life. It’s hard to think that we might not always live in the same city or that I might not be able to change the way I want to.

It’s easy for me to ignore all these elephants cramping my view though, because in my heart, I see this working. And I know that because this is one of the hardest times in our lives, it’s also one of the best. If you’re playing it right, the best time in your life is filled with uncertainty and risk. There’s nothing balanced about that. It’s exciting and exhilarating, and to take full advantage, you need to:

1) Let go.
2) Give in.
3) Smile.
4) Repeat.

I work for a company that will disrupt the traditional retail market and my boyfriend is someone that has disrupted everything I know about relationships. Nothing is stable now. That’s the thing about work/life balance. It’s more of a see-saw, kind of up and down, and is only ever balanced for the briefest moments in time.

Possibility perch.

Yes, this post was Ryan-approved before I hit publish. What are your thoughts on work/life balance? How do you achieve it? Do you want to have it all? Is it possible or are you content with just one or the other?

Careers are like relationships, so ask your mom for advice

“I don’t know if I want to be with Zeus,” I say.

“If you don’t want to, then don’t,” my mother replies.

But it’s more complicated than that, and I tell her why. I tell her that I really do what to be with him – a lot – but I don’t know how. I tell her that I’ve been sabotaging the relationship, and I don’t know how to stop. I confess everything, and feel the weight dissipate.

“You do look for problems,” she says. “You push things too far. You test people too much. That’s not good. So now you need to figure out if you’re going to mature and grow up or not.”

I’m silent because normally my mother tells me how great I am, how I can do no wrong, and how all men suck. It is the Gen Y parenting creed. But tonight, I am not so lucky.

“Why do you think you’re picking fights?” my mother presses. “You must be doing it for a reason – a lack of confidence in yourself, or in him?”

I concede that I don’t feel like my life is together enough to be in a relationship. And that I’m worried Zeus will sell his company, get rich and dump me. Or we’ll get married, live happily and divorce at the age of 40. Or that he won’t remember to suggest we eat something when I’m moody. Because I get cranky when I’m hungry.

These are the things I worry about. I am a woman. And this is what we do.

Women need constant reassurance, and the only way we know how to get it is to fight, and push buttons, and push past the buttons all the way to the brink of breaking up, so we can see – will he be there then?

My mother argues men can deal with this at first, but it adds up and is like a brick falling from the sky each time. It builds and it is cumulative and eventually they have a wall, and they think I don’t need this. I don’t need to be unhappy, nothing I do ever works or helps, and I can’t make her happy. This isn’t the way I want to live, men think.

And there’s a limit to what a man can take, my mother says.

“And you – ” she continues, “you need to live for today and for you. You can’t know the future. And nothing about your past relationships is pertinent for today. You have to resist the urge to fight. Resist the urge to be angry in an instant over nothing, resist pushing to the breaking point constantly.”

Careers are like this. Maybe you have an idea, or you really want something, or all of your dreams are suddenly within reach. But you make up excuses of why you can’t get there. You prove every hypothesis on why it won’t work. You extrapolate the worst. You don’t call people when you should. You think less of yourself than you used to. You ask others to comfort your decisions. You trip over your own accomplishments just to see – are you on the right path?

Lucky for you, careers are often just as forgiving and patient as men in the beginning, but you have to grow up for continued success. You have to mature before the wall seems insurmountable.

“It is work,” my mother concludes. “It’s a lot of work. But if it’s truly in your heart, you have to do that. You have to work to make it happen.”

Possibility perch.

Motherly advice.