Job or relationships. Which is better for defining your self-worth?

In My Humble Opinion
1

On another online forum, I was in a thread where a guy (who I will call Guy) was talking shit about an acquaintance. Apparently the acquaintance is one of those douchebags that brag about how awesome his job is all the time on social media. Guy was patting himself on the back for not being bothered by Douchebag. Guy, who has been unemployed for a couple of years, thinks that Douchebag is an idiot for resting his self-esteem on his job and he’s a loser because he’s never been in a relationship (as far as Guy can tell…they aren’t friends, after all). Meanwhile, Guy has a beautiful and loving wife. So even though Guy doesn’t have a job, he feels like his wife proves that he is successful and worthy. Moreover, because he values relationships more than employment, he thinks he’s actually more successful than Douchebag. Essentially, having a wife makes him immune to feelings of inferiority and makes him feel superior to those without one.

The whole post bothered me. For one thing, here is a guy busting on another guy for bragging on the internet, when that’s exactly what he is doing whether he wants to admit to it or not. Secondly, I don’t know why it’s so wrong to have one’s ego rest on their job. Since that opinion is coming from someone who hasn’t had a job in a long time, that sure sounds sour-grapey to me. And lastly, I don’t agree that it is inherently better to define success based on how many relationships you have versus some other metric. A significant other can toss you out like yesterday’s trash the same as an employer. Maintaining a relationship is hard work, but a lot of people just phone it in after awhile. I don’t know why they would necessarily deserve a medal over someone who has different priorities.

How important is having your own metric of success? Is it only something that comes to mind when you’re feeling insecure about your status? Or is it important to always have some rubric that allows you to assess where you are in life, lest you start resting on your laurels and being a “loser”?

2

Anybody who has to boast about their life on social media to validate their self-worth has serious esteem problems that aren’t going to be resolved by either their job or relationships. Beyond that, I have no useful insights since I’m not particularly enthused about either option.

Stranger

3

I think “neither” is the best I can come up with, here. Both of those things are better metrics of your value to others. External factors are not good indicators (by themselves) of self-worth. There have been a lot of very successful people (by either metric) who are still fairly miserable.

Further, neither relationships nor jobs really say anything about who the individual is. Maybe you’ve got a great job because your uncle is well connected. Maybe you’re in a great relationship because he “loves” you for your money. There is simply no way to state in a vacuum that either status is a meaningful reflection of who you are.

ETA: I’ll edit because I feel like I missed the point of your question, which I’m now taking to be how I define self-worth for myself. I think my relationships are a better reflection of (though they do not define) my self-worth. I like the person that I am (which was not always true), and I think that who I am has allowed me to develop a number of close and meaningful relationships. The fact that I’ve been able to bond with people who I think are great and who seem to feel the same about me gives me the sense that other people are seeing me similarly to the way I see myself.

While I’m fortunate to also have a great job, I think that is much more a product of good fortune than who I am as a person. I don’t mean to say that my personality has played no role in my career climb, but I am aware that both successes and failures in that arena are much more subject to external factors than successes and failures in my relationships. So for me, relationships are the better indicator.

4

When I was young I struggled to find my place. I was surrounded by people who seemed motivated by things that did not motivate me. I was being told I was succeeding, on the ‘right’ path, etc. All while I felt it was empty somehow. I could not force my square self into the round hole awaiting me and the harder I tried the more uncomfortable I became. I felt on the outside of some secret.

I up and went off traveling. Not ‘a week in Jamaica style’, several months in a place I would encounter things I had no knowledge of and see wonderful things I’d never imagined. Of course not even I expected to ‘fit in’ there. But I suddenly felt comfortable in my own skin in a way I never had, though never more clearly being a true ‘outsider’. It was an experience that changed everything about me and my future. I never looked back.

In the interim years I was often asked what I was doing, when would I give this life up and get on with ‘real life’. I struggled to make my friends and family understand, I struggled to put it into words. They could see I had changed. I was lit up, in a way I’d never been before. I suddenly thirsted for tomorrow to chase more adventure.

I came to understand this much, when you travel in this fashion there had better be more to you than your family name/history, your degree, the car you drive, how big your house is, your job title, who you hang with, who you married, the brand name on your clothes, etc, etc. Because those things don’t go with you. They mean less than nothing to the people you’ll encounter. You better have something else inside you besides a relationship to these things.

When I returned from that first experience, I was like a virus infecting those around me to give it a go. And many did, and had a blast, but it was a one off, not a lifestyle as it was for me. But there were a few who just really couldn’t handle it. And it WAS because who they were was fundamentally based on the things I mentioned. Without those things to support their self worth they were truly lost.

As you can see I have thought about your topic before, these are simply my observations.

And I’m still chasing the adventure, and loving every minute of it. I don’t have the things my peers do, but count myself enormously successful. Their assessment may be different, but that matters not in the least to me.

Success is all in your head. Attempting to compare your’s and their’s is utter folly in my opinion.

5

This.

You’re up one day and down the next.

That’s life.

6

The way you’re describing it here, it sounds like Guy is thinking of his wife as a Trophy Wife, and of having obtained her as an Achievement which should be worth lots of Success Points. Ugh.

One could do worse than to base self-worth on where one is making a contribution to the world and making other people’s lives better. And that can happen through one’s job and/or through one’s relationships.

(That measure still isn’t totally satisfying though. What if you’re unable to make much of a contribution through no fault of your own, due to something like health issues?)

7

When you are lying on your deathbed, would you rather be surrounded by your friends and family*, or by all the achievement awards you got at work?

While we’re living, it’s probably a good idea to be working at something you enjoy since we spend so much time doing it. So, yeah, you should get a certainly amount of feel-goodedness from your work. But we hyoo-mans are social animals, and few of us could be meaningfully happy without relationships-- living on a desert island, if you well. Not necessarily “the one relationship” with your souse or significant other, but with the people you choose to spend your time with.

*Assuming we’re talking about the family that you care about, not the ones you don’t.

8

Go back to bed, John. You’re still drunk.

9

People say this like the answer is obvious…like everyone is supposed to just know “friends and family” is the right answer.

But personally, I don’t freakin’ know. Do I want to die alone, so alone that no one knows until someone stumbles across my dried-up skeleton dressed up in pajamas? No, I don’t. But I know I won’t probably die with family and friends clustered around my bed, smiling down on me, telling me how much they love me. Most people don’t leave this world like this, even when they do spend a lot of time and energy cultivating relationships. So making sure I don’t die alone isn’t a goal of mine right now. Making awesome memories, both in solitude and with others, is what I’m living for.

I think it would warm my heart to be remembered for my professional contributions. I work as hard as do not just for a paycheck, but so that I can make a positive impact on my field. Even if it’s just a small one, that’s still something. If I were to disappear off this planet and my absence wasn’t felt by the folks on the job, well, that would hurt. Now, if I die in my 80s-90s, long after I’ve retired, I probably won’t care all that much about my career. But if I were to find myself on my deathbed later today, you better believe I would be thinking about whether my hard work made a difference to anyone.

Humans are a lot of things. We are social animals. We are creative animals. We are intellectual animals. So it seems strange to define success using a single measure and then apply it to everyone. I certainly don’t see someone like Nicola Tesla as a failure just because he died alone and penniless. I certainly wouldn’t say he was inherently more of a failure than a person who didn’t do anything remarkable except for having loving family and friends. I don’t even see the value in doing this kind of comparison.

10

Neither a job nor a relationship are accomplishments all into themselves. You accomplish things through these things. It’s unrealistic to think our accomplishments should have little to do with our pride and self-worth.

If someone is at least moderately comfortable with their life, then they probably have a healthy sense of self-worth. Does this come from them having a good job? Or does it come from them feeling loved and connected with others? Or perhaps some combination of these things plus other things? There is no universal answer to this, because everyone has different needs.

Sounds like Guy is projecting his needs onto the other guy he was criticizing, so he could make himself feel superior. I can understand the emotional impulse because unemployed men aren’t exactly diefied in our society. Hopefully his relationship is actually as strong as he portrays it,

11

I agree that the cliche that “no one ever regreted not spending more time at the office” is really simplistic. I do good at work. I send poor kids to college with the skills and money to stay there. I’m respected by students and peers.

I’m better at work than I am at being a wife or mom or sister or daughter. I mean, I don’t think I’m terrible in those roles, but I’m no rock star. In a really limited way, I AM a rock star at work, and I like that. I work hard that it shpuld be so. And I contribute less to my family because if it. At the end of the day, I have no idea id the remarkable good I can do for stranger’s kids morally balances out the mild to moderate deficiencies that causes in my own parenting (and wife-ing and daighter-ing and sister-ing) I can’t even find time to really think about it, and when I try I don’t know where to start. It can’t be reduced to a simple guideline. Or it can, and I’m a selfish vain bitch fooling myself.

12

To be honest, I was not asking that question like I knew everyone was going to answer it the same way… especially on this MB! :slight_smile:

If I was not clear, I’m sorry, but I thought I said that we should all aim to get some value from both of the things you offered, but knowing what I know about the human animal, I don’t think a fulfilling life can be had without relationships. I think mental health depends on it. I didn’t even address other items since you asked specifically about those two things. But yeah, a well rounded life is one where you get enjoyment from a range of things, not just work and relationships.

13

Yes, but I don’t think he intended to. Oddly enough, I believe he thought he was being humble, not braggart. But I think it goes back to how people were trained to think in high school. “I’m popular! The cool kids like me! Ergo, I must be a pretty okay person!” Occasionally I’ll hear people say that because So-and-So is friends with Whathisface, he can’t be all that bad. So I think Guy was expressing a fairly common belief: One’s friends reflect who he or she is as a person.

I agree with you on both points. I think making a positive difference to someone else is a good (albeit utilitarian) way of defining self-worth. But then that means self-worth must be externally determined. How does one protect their ego when the world doesn’t seem to want what they have to offer? If someone can’t find a job and can’t make friends, what should they tell themselves to keep from feeling like a loser?

14

I’m with you fellers.

“When I die, I want to be 100 years and successful enough to be in my own bed surrounded by naked virgins and with a belly full of beer while all my children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren celebrate my life in the next room”… I don’t know where or who I got this quote from

15

I appreciate the clarification. But I guess I need to clarify too. I’m not really talking what makes a “well rounded” life. I’m talking about self-worth and “success”. I don’t think Nicola Tesla had a well-rounded life. But I don’t think he was a failure or a loser. I think the contributions he made to science and innovation make him a “somebody”, even if he was a “somebody” who died all alone with no friends or (non-avian) SO.

Manda JO, you are a rock star on this message board. Just FYI.

16

Or he really loves W C Fields. And shouldn’t there be an accent over the e?

17

I think success at work and at relationships comes from a feeling of self worth, not vice versa. There are plenty of outwardly successful people who feel like frauds. (I just watched All That Jazz. ) There are plenty of people who cheat on their trophy wives.
But if you start out feeling stupid and useless you probably won’t take the risks to be successful at work, or in relationships.

18

I’m a pretty self-contained person. While I’m lucky enough to have both romantic relationships and family and friend relationships, I think I’d be pretty much just as happy without them. Without a job, though, I think I’d pretty much feel like a loser. (well, unless I was retired on a pile of cash that I’d earned at a job, but that’s a different thing)

19

Am I taking your thread title too literally? I think that both your work and your relationships (and other things) give you a sense of self-worth, but relationships are “better”, because I think most people would literally go insane without having any. Maybe people would go insane without work, too, if we define work as “something you do when you’re not having spending time with your friends and family”. But I think most people are thinking of “a job”, and we know that people don’t go insane just because they don’t have a job.

BTW, if we were ranking everything, I might rank relationships #1 and work #2. So I’m not dis’ing work!!

20

Do we actually *know *that people don’t go insane when they don’t have a job?

Because I thought the prevailing wisdom about the cause of the opioid epidemic was “lack of jobs”. Addiction isn’t insanity, but it is a mental illness.

I suspect I’d be one of those people who would fall into depression if I didn’t have a job and had to rely on family for support. I love my parents and my siblings, but to be reliant on them would be devastating to me. I don’t think my family’s love would be enough to blot out the negative feelings I would have about not being financially independent and no longer being able to call myself a scientist.

However, I probably would not be depressed if I lost my job on the same day that I won the lottery jackpot. It is not really a job that’s important, but what is conferred by a job. If I won the lottery jackpot, not only would I be self-sufficient, but I would have the means to do good in the world. The same as if I had a job.

The same nuance exists in relationships, yes? I think most people would be depressed if they were absolutely alone, but relationships can drive some people insane too. A relationship is valuable only when it confers more benefits than harm. A person who rests their self-esteem on the relationships they have, without factoring in how good those relationships actually are, strikes me as someone who likely has horrible self-esteem.