by Michelle Wilkinson

Created on: June 03, 2010

Being a workaholic is likely to have an extremely detrimental impact on your family life, since your main focus is working all the time. You can hardly expect to have a fulfilling family life if you never spend any time with your family, but as a workaholic you often lose sight of why it is your working. In the beginning you may have put in the hours in order to obtain promotion and to earn more money, but as time goes on you find that you just can’t stop yourself from working more even when there is nothing really to be gained from doing so.

However, that’s the problem with having an addiction – it feels impossible to give up the very thing you’re addicted to. Besides, you can’t exactly give up work altogether, anyway, but you could decide to work fewer hours so that your career no longer dominates your life. If you don’t address the issues which have led you to become a workaholic it is you and your family that suffers. You may think that work is enough to sustain you, but it’s very lonely being a workaholic, as you feel you have no one to confide in at work or at home.

When you’re a workaholic you’re don’t just put in extra hours for the sake of making a little bit of extra cash which could provide a better life for your family. You generally tend to find that your partner and children would much rather go without a few luxuries if it meant you spent more time at home. Working long hours isn’t good for your health, anyway, and if you don’t start taking care of yourself you could become seriously ill and find that you’re unable to work. It will clearly be painful for your family to watch your health decline, which will only make you feel worse about the situation.

If you work all the time you miss out on so much of family life. You don’t get to do anything fun with your partner or children and even when you do your mind is elsewhere. You might go to the beach or go for a bike ride, but if you’re a workaholic your mind is always going to be back at work. You often don’t get to see key moments in your children’s lives, such as when they take their first steps, and miss out on being a proper parent, which obviously affects the relationship you have with them later down the line.

Evidently, then, you have to address the fact you’re a workaholic if you want to change the situation to ensure your family life doesn’t suffer and that you get to enjoy spending time with the people you care about, rather than being sat in front of a computer screen all day long.

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