Why People Can Prefer Coworkers Over Their Partners

The places we work can sometimes become such places of comfort that we find ourselves preferring to be there rather than anywhere else.

It becomes a place of belonging, purpose and meaningful social interaction that we just don’t get at some places like home. And for some people, when their personal relationships are suffering, it can feel like leaving work is the same as going back to hell.

I think a lot of us started having to confront how important being at work was during the Covid lockdown in 2020. Many work places promoted remote work and tried to get things done without coworkers interacting.

I think a lot of marriages ran into problems during this period as well. I’m not saying that covid caused divorces—it’s likely more believable to acknowledge that relationships which suffered were probably already on sandy foundations. But, as couples spent more time with each other than they might have been used to, they began to realize something new: it was one thing to  love someone, it was another to be around them all of the time without an escape.

During this time, a lot of couples realized they held different values and personal goals. Some marriages struggled under the strain of new conflicts and competing perspectives. It was a moment for a lot of couples to really get to know each other in ways they never had before.

I think the same thing tends to happen with sports stars and their wives too. It seems really common to hear of the marriages of top tier athletes falling apart quite quickly after their retirement from sports. Maybe because they realized that their relationships were built upon public fame, or money, or even the distance they used to keep between themselves as they lived out their professional lives away from each other. After having to spend substantially more time together after retirement, maybe they realized that their love was built upon superficial elements and a weak core.

Maybe this helps us understand why a person might love going to work. I have one answer to why that might be so: the admiration we find there.

Who Loves You More?

When I say admirers, I don’t mean people that adore them or look at them with desire. I mean people who respect you and treat you like someone special. Not just someone they come home to and get used to doing everything with day after day. There is a bit of a space that remains between coworkers, making them always feel a bit like strangers or people with more to uncover. Maybe at one workplace there is a woman who leads a team of workers to great success. Someone you can appreciate for their leadership and business genius. You’re admiring someone for the work they do, and they inspire you to be better.

Or maybe there is a man at work who just can’t help but playfully flirt with the women at his workplace. It's dangerous, and maybe borders on harassment, but is it not all in fun when it’s done between consenting adults who make it known they’re ok with it? Maybe it’s also fun for the one being flirted with. Some people like compliments or attention, especially when it’s from someone they like or respect in the workplace. It can make a hard day feel more meaningful and worth the labor.

Just this special kind of attention alone between coworkers can make people laugh with every corny or playful attempt to make others smile. It can bring elements of joy that just don’t exist outside of work—whether in public or at home. It can feel good for everyone when a team is playful and shares a mutual trust at work.

Now, picture what one of these people you can admire might be dealing with when they get home. A lot of people go home to their spouses, but they’re so used to each other that the same excitement they get from work just isn’t there. It’s different. Maybe the days of praise or flirtatiousness are gone. Maybe a husband prefers to watch his basketball team lose another game while his wife surfs social media. There could be a real lack of social spark happening.

At home, we also often get weighted down by our familial responsibilities, making it difficult to appreciate our family. This is especially true when our partners might not be the best communicators. We are expected to do our duties without receiving praise.

But when that person goes to work, maybe they’re known as an expert in their field. Maybe they have a mentor that sees great promise in their abilities and shows them how to improve. They can have admirers that respect them and make it known.

In an ironic kind of way, some people when they’re at work feel like royalty; when they’re at home, they feel like a cog in a machine. In a situation like this, the community they have at work surpasses the one they have at home, giving them a place to escape to from lives that leave them feeling unfulfilled.

You can learn a lot about a person and who they are by looking at this home-work relationship people have. It can even reveal parts of people you never knew existed.

Workplaces in Stories

Homelife and workplaces don’t get focused on a lot, especially in strong narrarive-driven stories. They often get cursory mentions as the story drags the character along, more determined to get them to their next destination instead of showing these different sides of a character.

If you’re writing a story where the workplace plays a significant role in the narrative, ask yourself who are they at work and who are they at home, because it might be two different sides of the same person, flipping a coin depending on where they are at in the moment—almost like writing two completely separate personalities for one character. It makes you wonder who the real person is, the one they are at home or the one at work?

A perfect example of this happens in the story, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. The two protagonists, George Milton and Lennie Small, work on a farm during the great depression of the United States of America. They both have dreams of earning enough money, getting their own farm, and running it together.

Unfortunately, a series of bad events lead to an ending where their dreams are broken in more ways than one. Don’t worry, I’m not going to spoil the ending. But I can say that the whole plot takes place on a farm which acts as more than just a place, but a deep metaphor for their lives. What the farm really represents is their prison. A place they cannot leave. A place that keeps them from achieving their shared dreams. As their home lives become closely intertwined with their work, the metaphor only becomes more potent. As their actions seek to decrease their stress and burdens by seeking relief elsewhere, we discover that, in reality, none of them can escape.

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck might seem like a bit of a tragic view on the idea but it does a great job of showing the hard hopeless conditions of life and our relationships to work, helping grow our understanding and personal perspectives by the end.

In the next post, we’ll discuss how a workplace or group arranges people when dealing with conflicts, and the hierarchies that grow from such interactions.