【英语生活】工作并非性生活杀手

On the evening of my 40th birthday six couples came to dinner. Each pair was happy that night – or at least put on a decent show of seeming so. Seven years on, five out of the six couples are divorced.

Lately I have wondered if there was something in the sushi, though mostly I put it down to coincidence and bad luck.

Yet judging from the latest Harvard Business Review, there could be a more systematic explanation for marital meltdown on such an impressive scale. It seems my friends could be an example of the latest Worrying Workplace Trend: people who work too hard.

In “Extreme jobs: the dangerous allure of the 70-hour workweek” the HBR suggests that too much time spent working is resulting in not enough time for talk – or for sex. Extreme jobs, it seems, can lead to extreme divorce.

Before reading this piece I had heard of extreme sports and extreme makeovers and extreme weather systems, but the idea that jobs could be extreme was new to me. Indeed, extreme jobs are what used to be called good jobs: you spend a lot of time at the office, get paid a vast amount of money, have interesting work and a lot of responsibility. Many readers of the FT have jobs like these, as do some of my friends.

However, according to the HBR, extreme jobs are not good at all: they are damaging, unsustainable and the growing trend towards extremity in the job market is something we all should be fretting about.

One of the authors is Sylvia Ann Hewlett, the great guru of the work-life balance movement. Like most of her kind, she starts from the position that long hours are A Bad Thing. However, unlike others, she has actually bothered to test the standard view that long hours make people burnt out and miserable. She has found (which I could have told her, more or less) that on the contrary, 66 per cent of people doing extreme jobs say they love them. So far, so sublimely unworrying.

Undeterred, she set out to find a deeper, more personal fall-out from long hours. She sent researchers off with clipboards to ask impertinent questions and they came back with an interesting finding: 50 per cent of well-paid workaholics have an unsatisfying sex life and say work is to blame. This sounds bad. Though, on second thoughts, is it? The corollary must be that 50 per cent find their sex lives satisfying, which (and I'm guessing here) is surely above the global average for the age group. And the fact that those not satisfied by their sex lives blame it on their work seems like special pleading to me.

I have always assumed that people who do extreme jobs are likely to have extreme sex lives too. The same article shows that workers who do these jobs are primarily motivated by the adrenaline rush that goes with such work. Surely these thrill seekers are the very people to have a “work-hard, shag-hard” approach to life.

I have made some delicate inquiries with friends and concluded that, when it comes to the libido-suppressing activities of the working day, extreme bureaucracy and an extreme commute are far more potent than the extreme job could ever be.

Either way, the more important thing is not what extreme jobs do to one's sex life but the effect they have on relationships.

According to the research, 46 per cent say their jobs interfere with “having a strong relationship with my spouse/partner”. But given how hard it is to sustain strong relationships anyway, this doesn't seem too bad.

Worse is to come: after a 12-hour-plus working day 45 per cent were too tired to talk to their partners at all. But does this amount to the “dramatic under-investment in intimate relationships” that the authors fret about? Surely if you don't say anything at the end of a hard day, you don't have a row. And as long as you occasionally say something nice at other times then all can be well.

The important thing is not how long someone works. It is how happy they are in their work. If they are happy – and as Hewlett admits, extreme workers generally are – then relationships are likely to be happy(ish) too.

When I think of the 12 friends who made up my six couples, many work hard, but only one does an extremely extreme job: he works a 90-hour week, is powerful, influential, hugely fulfilled and handsomely rewarded. He is the only male still married. You could say that his wife hasn't seen him for long enough since my birthday dinner to serve the divorce papers, but I don't think that is the only reason they are still together.

By contrast those who have got divorced have not been undone by Extreme Jobs. One was done for by Extreme Job Dissatisfaction, which is a nastier kettle of fish altogether. Another by Extreme Unemployment and a third by Extreme Alcohol Abuse. Most of them had a further element playing against them: Extreme Misjudgment over Choice of Spouse.

More plausibly the article talks of the adverse effect an extreme job can have on children though, provided that just one spouse is working to extreme, this doesn't seem too serious.

There is, however, one interesting finding from the research that strikes a resounding chord.

The strongest reported negative fallout from Extreme Jobs is that 70 per cent report problems in “being able to maintain my home”.

From personal experience I can confirm this. Whenever I find myself working too hard, my appetite for maintaining my own home goes down the plug hole. Not only can I not be bothered to do-it-myself, I am far too tired to pick up the phone and harass a builder.

But then if the only unambiguously adverse effect of working such long hours is that one's garden wall is falling down or that new curtains are needed for the back bedroom – one is tempted to conclude that the Extreme Job may not be quite such a Worrying Workplace Trend after all

在我40岁生日那天，我邀请了6对夫妇共进晚餐。那天夜里，每对夫妇都很幸福——或者说，至少都表现得非常幸福。7年过去了，其中5对离了婚。近来我一直纳闷，难道当晚的寿司里有什么不好的东西？不过，我还是把主要原因归咎于巧合和霉运。

然而，根据最新一期《哈佛商业评论》(Harvard Business Review)来判断，如此惊人的离婚率可能有一个更系统的解释。似乎我的朋友们都可以为最近“令人担忧的职场倾向(Worrying Workplace Trend)”充当例证：他们都是工作太努力的人。

《哈佛商业评论》一篇名为《极端工作：每周工作70小时的危险诱惑》(Extreme jobs: the dangerous allure of the 70-hour workweek)的文章指出，在工作中投入太多时间，导致没有足够时间交谈（或者做爱）。极端的工作似乎会导致极端的离婚率。

在看到这篇文章之前，我听说过极限运动(extreme sports)、超级变妆(extreme makeovers，译注：美国有一个真人秀电视节目叫“Extreme Makeover”)和极端气候系统(extreme weather systems)，然而，所谓工作也可能极端的观点，对我来说则是全新的。实际上，极端工作是那些通常被称为“好工作”的工作：你花大量时间在办公室里，得到大笔酬劳，做着有趣的工作，拥有很大权限。英国《金融时报》的许多读者都有这样的工作，我的一些朋友也一样。

然而，据《哈佛商业评论》称，极端工作一点儿都不好：它们具有破坏性，难以持久，而我们应该对职场上日益极端化的趋势感到紧张。

这篇文章的作者之一，是工作/生活平衡运动的宗师西尔维亚•安•休利特(Sylvia Ann Hewlett)。正如大多数志同道合者一样，她首先指出，长时间工作是“一件糟糕的事”。然而，与其他人不同的是，她实际上并没有去论证那种认为长时间工作让人筋疲力尽、痛苦悲惨的标准观点。她发现，与此相反，66%从事极端工作的人都表示自己喜欢这些工作（这一点，我多多少少也能告诉她）。说到这里，情况似乎一点儿也不令人担忧。

不过她没有止步，她开始探求长时间工作导致的更深层次、更个人化的结果。她派出研究人员，拿着题板向人们问一些鲁莽的问题。他们带回来一个有趣的发现：50%拿着高薪的工作狂都对性生活不满意，而且都表示这是因为工作问题。听起来很糟糕。可是再想一想，是这样吗？研究者就此肯定能够推出这样的结论：50%的人发现自己的性生活很令人满意，而（我敢说）这个结果肯定高于这个年龄段的全球平均水平。那些对自己性生活不满意的人把原因归咎于工作，似乎就是专门为了反驳我的观点。

我总是想当然认为，从事极端工作的人可能也有极端的性生活。而《哈佛商业评论》的这篇文章表明，从事这些工作的人，基本上是受到这种工作激发出的肾上腺素的推动。这些寻求刺激的人当然会拥有“拼命工作、拼命做爱”的生活方式。

我向朋友们询问了一些敏感问题，得出的结论是：就工作中压抑性欲的活动而言，极端官僚作风和极端通勤的影响远甚于极端的工作。

总之，更重要的不是极端工作对一个人性生活的影响，而是对人际关系的影响。

根据这项研究，46%的人表示自己的工作影响他们“与配偶/伴侣保持牢固关系”。不过，考虑到维持牢固的关系有多难，这一比例似乎也不算太糟糕。

更糟糕的是：在工作了12个多小时之后，45%的人太劳累了，根本不跟伴侣交谈。不过，这种情况是否导致了作者所担心的“亲密关系投资严重不足”呢？在难熬的一天结束后，如果你什么都不说，你就不会和人吵架。只要你平时偶尔说点好听的话，那么，一切都会好起来。

重要的不是工作多长时间，而是工作时有多快乐。如果他们快乐（休利特也承认，极端员工一般都挺快乐），那么关系也可能是快乐的（或近似快乐）。

想想我那6对夫妇朋友。他们12人中，很多人都努力工作，但只有一个从事非常极端的工作：他每周工作90小时，有权有势，忙得不可开交，收入也非常可观。他是唯一一位仍然处于已婚状态的男性。你可以说，自从我的生日晚会之后，他妻子与他见面的时间都不够准备离婚材料的。不过，我认为那不是他们仍然在一起的唯一原因。

与此相反，那些离婚的人并不是被“极端工作”拆散的。一个是因为“极端的工作不满意感”——这种情况更糟。另一个是因为“极端失业”，还有一个是因为“极端酗酒”。他们大多数人都还另有一个不利因素：“配偶选择极端失误”。

这篇文章更为可信的地方，似乎是它提到极端工作可能对孩子产生负面影响。不过，如果配偶中只有一方工作极端的话，似乎也不算太严重。

然而，这项研究有一个很有趣的发现，很能引起共鸣。

文章指出，“极端工作”最大的负面影响，是70%的人指出自己因此“不能维修住宅”。

以个人经验而论，我可以证明这一点。不管什么时候，只要我发现自己工作太努力了，自己维修住宅的欲望就极低。不只是懒得自己动手，甚至累到不愿拿起电话去麻烦一个维修工。

不过，如果长时间工作所导致的唯一明确的负面影响，就是花园的墙倒了，或者后面的卧室需要换新窗帘了，那么，人们可能会得出这样的结论：“极端工作”可能根本算不上是一种“令人担忧的职场倾向”。

译者/徐柳

《FT商学院》