Esther Perel just came out with a new podcast about work relationships, and this morning she spoke at CreativeMornings about it at the New School.
Although the topic has shifted from romantic to professional relationships, her bottom line hasn’t: we expect too much. We have unprecedented expectations from our work life, seeking purpose, fulfillment, security, and a place to attend to physical and emotional needs. And now more than ever we connect our sense of identity with our job title.
“It’s an identity economy,” she said, flashing another stroke of semantic brilliance that’s the backbone of her success as an author, public speaker, and podcaster.
Here’s how she breaks it down: three generations ago, the majority of jobs were hierarchal and had a recognizable structure and clear ladder. Decades later, we’ve broken that ladder and the “structure shifted to a network.”
…Or a “web”. A work web. The web has more freedoms than the ladder, and it’s easier to move around it, but it makes you more vulnerable — you can fall through it. The vulnerability of the web makes us all a little tense, and we turn to building clearly-defined and desirable identities through things like job titles, resumes, and personal websites.
Is that a bad thing? Finding and defining a professional identity or ‘self’? she mused. Leaving this little gem of an insight hanging, Perel shifted the focus to a new question to the audience, which had the jarring result of making some audience members audibly tear up.
Were you raised for autonomy or interdependence?
No matter how well we polish our professional identity, she noted, we’ll always bring our upbringing to the table in any relationship, romantic, professional, or otherwise. This question was the central one to address before attempting to marry our professional selves to our personal.
Half the audience raised their hands for autonomy. The other half for interdependence. Anyone who’s been to a therapist or read one book on attachment theory knows that interdependence is the better one. Her final credo seemed most likely directed at the autonomous:
Three major forces are at play in both a work and romantic relationship: Power, Trust, and Respect/Recognition. Within each of these camps, how will you break through to new levels of experience with others to reach your definition of success?