Are you energized at work, and exhausted at home? Do you feel more valued and appreciated for putting out fires at the office? Swooping in to save the critical deadline? Leading your team to crushing your quarterly goals?
Yet somehow, at home you feel unappreciated, overlooked, and taken for granted?
If this sounds like you, then you may be coping with the lack of intimate connection by driving yourself too hard—performing for love and acceptance at the expense of your deepest desires.
Insatiable drive for “winning”
I realized this was a shared challenged I had with another very prominent career woman. We were both struggling in our marriages. But at work, we dominated in our space. This was a very sacred connection because who do you talk to about the embarrassment of private failure? We were both over-performing at work. And the more we were driven for value and acceptance in the public, the more it hurt our bottom line at home.
Self-distracting from Increased feeling of loneliness
For both of us, we drowned the deepening isolation in our marriage with community service. While this is generally an admirable practice, it may be a over-performance masking the pain of a lonely marriage. I would lose myself in everyone else’s problems. I invested most of my day saving the world. At least when I was rescuing others, I could distract myself from the nagging emptiness of my own marriage.
Neglected internal conflict
Having so much in common, my friend and I shared our wins and lamentations alike. The season finally came when we reached a fork in the road that led us into different directions. For her, it was an incredible ramp up in her career path. She catapulted into national and international impact. I, on the other hand, resigned from my role as a litigator and launched my home school, falling far into the background away from the action of the others who were scaling their way to the top of their career influence.
Walking away from my demanding job and entering fulltime mom mode challenged me in ways I never imagined. It created bandwidth for me to explore my own “little girl,” the unhealed version of myself which was driving me to perform more and more for love and acceptance. The time I spent listening for her cries, responding to her honestly, and being present with her unlocked the doors to peace I never experienced before.
My friend, on the other hand, at the climax of her world-changing chapter, was served with divorce. Ultimately, the pain of divorce drove her to the same space—sitting with her own “little girl,” and meeting her with pure love and acceptance.
From Conflict to Sustainable Peace
My friend and I had the same fundamental needs, talents and abilities. In fact, she had exponential wealth, status and connections afforded to her by circumstances much different than my own. If anything, her resources provided more of an advantage for success in marriage than my own. The real difference between us was the path we took to finally claim peace from our own internal conflict. For me, ending my performance-for-love resulted in a softening of my husband’s heart toward me and reconciliation of our differences. For her, the performance ended only after the pain of an unexpected divorce. We were both overachievers. We were both overperforming. And for both of us, this behavior was a key driving force in our marital disharmony.
What changed within me eventually captured my husband’s attention. He became intrigued my the reversal of my triggers. He was more attentive. He listened more. He now invests quite a bit of effort anticipating and responding to my needs before I can ask. He’s not perfect. Our marriage is far from perfect. But the peace I created for myself invited him to join me without the pressure of performance. I stopped demanding his performance. I stopped performing. Instead, we began connecting.
I’m not any different than my girlfriend. In many ways, I still absolutely adore and admire her for her accomplishments, beauty, and passion. The only difference is that I took a different path that got me more of what I want from both my work and my home. I did this by combining my legal training with practical relationship wisdom. If you would like access to all of the resources that created my transformation, then register for your law library card today to learn how to claim peace from conflict.
Be blessed and encouraged,
Judge Char
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