Work Dissatisfaction Mirrors Relationship Evaluation

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Feelings of discontent towards work often stem from deeper, unarticulated issues, serving as rationalizations for dissatisfaction. Psychological evaluations of work dissatisfaction parallel those of romantic relationships, indicating that the factors influencing our choices in both areas are fundamentally similar.

Are you unhappy at your job? Are you starting to consider a change of career because of how your current work makes you feel? Do you know why?

According to our guest in this episode, Dr. Tessa West, a psychologist at NYU, if you are currently contemplating whether you want to do the work that you do everyday you should know that although this feeling is common, psychologists who study this sort of thing have discovered that our narratives for why we feel this way are often just rationalizations and justifications.

In fact, it turns out that the way we psychologically evaluate the jobs we think we might not want to do anymore is nearly identical to how we evaluate romantic relationships we feel like we might no longer want to be a part of. The feelings are usually undeniable, but our explanations for why we feel the way we feel can be wildly inaccurate, and because of that, our resulting behavior can be, let’s say, sub-optimal. We sometimes stay far longer than we should or make knee-jerk decisions we later regret or commit to terrible mistakes that could have been avoided.

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