How to Break Up With Your Career: The study of relationships can teach us a lot about the right way to fall out of love with your job --and find a new, more fulfilling one

 

"The path out of love is rarely straightforward. This is true whether we're ending a marriage or saying goodbye to an entirely different relationship -- the one we have with our career.

Relationship scientists have spent decades documenting the process of falling out of love: what the emotional roller coaster feels like, how psychological biases keep us from understanding our breakup behaviors, how we fail to prepare for our next relationship. But despite the similarities between breaking up with a lover and breaking up with a career, we rarely see the parallels.

That's a mistake, because looking at these parallels offers insights for anyone who might consider a career change. The science of relationship breakups can teach us how to read the lingering signs of attachment so we don't stay in a career too long. It can help us understand what we will most miss about a job in ways that will keep us from panicking and returning to an old job. And it can help us be smart about what comes next, so we don't rebound into a new job that has little staying power.

Here is a closer look at how relationship science can help you through the stages of falling out of love with your career -- and avoid common mistakes in the process.

Lesson 1: Don't be fooled by pangs of love

Most of us think that at least when it comes to our careers, nagging doubts will lead us to pull away from our jobs and quietly quit. But just as so often happens in romantic relationships, the opposite is often true.

In romantic relationships, early doubts are often punctuated by moments of romantic attachment. The emotional ambivalence we feel -- hot one moment, cold the next -- leads us to go "all in" on the relationship in an effort to prove to ourselves that we did everything we could to make it work. There are more last-ditch-effort date nights when you're falling out of love than when you're in it.

At work, the same dynamic is at play. In between emotional lows are bursts of engagement: We show up earlier and leave later; we volunteer to take on new tasks. Not only do the people around us -- including our bosses -- misread these signs, but you probably will, too. You might be tempted to think, "I must still love this job, or I wouldn't be working so hard at it."

Don't read too much into these pangs of love. They aren't necessarily signs you are reinvigorated. More likely, they are signs that you are trying to convince yourself that this relationship, this career, still has plenty of life in it.

The only evidence that should convince you to stay, though, is evidence that this career will give as much to you as you give to it -- that your efforts are met with new, and sustained, forms of appreciation at work. In the same way that a relationship can't be fixed through the efforts of one person, simply putting more effort into work can't fix your relationship with your career.

Lesson 2: Acknowledge the good stuff

At this point, you've decided: You're leaving. There is no saving this relationship.

Now, instead of hoping to save the relationship, you are in the "I hate everything about you" phase. That's the same with the career: Suddenly, there's nothing good about the job. It's a grind, every day.

In that first stage, you have a bias to see good things in the relationship that aren't really there. In this stage, the opposite is true: You fail to see any good thing.

This is a frustrating stage to be in, and during it, we are often so focused on how much we dislike it all that we fail to consider what might pull us back in.

In romantic relationships, there's one factor that often separates the people who fall out of love properly from those who become on-again-off-again partners: the ability to have a frank conversation about how comfortable this relationship is, and what they can do to mitigate the loss of that comfort.

Comfort can come in many forms at work. There are small things, like a quiet, well-lit office and knowing whom to call if you lose your keys. And there are big things, like knowing if you ask for a day off at the last minute, you will get it.

Just like in a romantic relationship, if you refuse to acknowledge anything good about the job, you will be surprised when you do recognize what you've lost. And the pain of those losses could draw you back into the job. It sets you up for a pattern: You come back, then you break up again, then you come back, and so on.

Recognizing the positives of a job means you can prepare for losing them and not let those losses overwhelm you. It can also mean you learn what good things from your old job you want to migrate over to your new one.

It's a bit like missing your ex's cooking. If you learn to tell yourself, "despite everything about this relationship being bad, I am really going to miss the meatballs," you can prepare for the loss. But when you don't prepare, you have a hard time separating the meatballs from the person, and you get pulled back in.

The ability to take a day off at the last minute doesn't change the fundamental nature of the job. But it sure can look sweet if you never thought about it before.

Lesson 3: Figure out your breakup story

The breakup is official. Now it's time to tell the world. Reputations are at stake, as are friendships.

That is, you know what that narrative is in your head, but how you talk about it is a whole different thing.

In romantic relationships, this is called the "grave-dressing" stage. It's the stage where you need to create a narrative of what went wrong in the relationship: why you broke up, who's to blame, and how you plan to minimize collateral damage. Get this part wrong, and you risk losing all of the shared friends you and your ex had.

At work, grave-dressing your relationship with your career is important in several ways. You will need to grave-dress during job interviews when asked the question, "Why did you leave that job? What went wrong?" You need to do it on your resume and cover letters when framing previous roles and experiences, and during networking conversations with people in new industries.

A good grave-dressing speech should be balanced and not blamey; it should involve a good deal of reflection of what you learned and where you want to go next.

In romantic relationships, it's useful to have shared friends help you grave-dress. Those who were around during the relationship are a great resource for framing what went wrong, and what you could do differently in the future.

Instead of delivering the bad news to your workplace friends and then awkwardly avoiding them, do the opposite. Bring them closer, and have them help you develop your grave-dressing narrative. It will help you solidify your relationships so you don't lose them once you're in a new job, and it will help you figure out how to frame yourself for the future.

Lesson 4: Avoid the rebound career

If you've made it to stage four, you're successfully out of love with your old career, and ready to start a new one. The next step is to find a new career that fits. And critically, to avoid a detour along the way: the bad rebound relationship.

Many of us come out of long-term relationships with no desire to hop into something serious right away. But somehow, through a series of small decisions, we wind up back in a relationship that isn't great.

Sliding into a relationship is common in love, and it's common at work. Sliding means failing to slow down during the dating stage and have deliberative conversations about what we want out of our next relationship. It means not asking the tough questions about finances and children and long-term desires. Instead, we make a series of small decisions -- like slowly spending more nights at someone's apartment, bringing more of our stuff over each time -- until one day we're living together and sharing rent.

Don't slide into your next career. Decide into it instead. Ask the tough questions during interviews about what success and failure means and what your career path might be. You know from the second lesson what you liked about your old job; make sure those are part of the new one as well. If an offer seems too good to be true, assume that it is, and do some truth-seeking to find out what the job will really be like.

It's easy to feel like you're falling in love with a new job when you have just gotten out of a bad one. But finding a career that is going to be a good long-term fit can only happen if you choose it, and you don't let it choose you.

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Tessa West is a professor of psychology at New York University and author of "Job Therapy: Finding Work That Works for You." She can be reached at reports@wsj.com.

Shortly:

Lesson 1: Don't be fooled by pangs of love

Lesson 2: Acknowledge the good stuff 

 Lesson 3: Figure out your breakup story

Lesson 4: Avoid the rebound career" [1]

1. The New Workplace (A Special Report) --- How to Break Up With Your Career: The study of relationships can teach us a lot about the right way to fall out of love with your job --and find a new, more fulfilling one, West, Tessa.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 16 Sep 2024: R.1