At a time when the country needs every available entrepreneur to get it out of the present economic mess, research suggests that self-employment can have a down side for the family. Couples should be warned that having a partner who is self-employed can seriously damage their personal relationship, lead to marital dissatisfaction and divorce.
Results of recent research by couple-counsellor Denis Sharp suggests that relationships where one or both partners are self-employed can suffer serious stresses not experienced by other couples. Denis thinks more work is needed to provide a better understanding of the difficulties experienced by some couples due to working for yourself so that problems can be avoided and more informed help given to those who need it.
In his day-to-day couple work Denis has identified that where a person chooses to work for themselves that this can be a serious threat to the couple’s happiness, and all too often ends in marriage breakdown. Often people don’t know what they are letting themselves in for when they become involved with someone who runs their own business. The business can be so all-consuming that the emotional partner sometimes feels controlled and burdened by the other’s dedication to work, and family life and the relationship suffers. Some have been likened their relationship to a ménage a trois with the business being “the other party” blamed for relationship breakdown.
Most men dream of being a Bernie Ecclestone or Richard Branson, an entrepreneur successful in business, extremely rich, always with beautiful woman on their arm. And many women have thought of founding their own business like Anita Roddick and Laura Ashley, or at least being married to someone as successful as an Alan Sugar. Most budding entrepreneurs don’t find instant success after an appearance on “Dragon’s Den” or “The Apprentice” they begin, and often end, their self-employed career with long hours and lots of hard work without ever making a fortune and living the dolce vita. But while most businessmen and women expect to face some business difficulties, few envisage the serious pitfalls business can have for their private lives and their partners.
While many studies have shown that the self-employed are happier in their work than employees, on average they also work longer hours, have lower take-home pay, spend less time with their partners and families, and suffer far more stress - much of which spills over when they bring their problems home with them from work.
More than ten per cent of the UK workforce is self-employed, doing anything from home-working to running multi-million pound industries. Eight out of ten of these workers are men, with the vast majority running very small businesses employing just a few workers. Many are sole-traders having no employees and having to do everything themselves or with the help of their family - what one client called forced family labour.
Unlike men, for whom the business is usually a full time job, most self-employed women work part time, often from home, fitting work in with caring and family commitments. Usually it is very poorly paid and is the only form of work available to them. Having a wife or partner who uses the home and home-time for her work can lead to resentment from a partner, particularly if they already feel guilty or inadequate in not being an adequate wage earner themselves.
There appears to be no single reason why self-employment so severely damages some relationships, but Denis’s research has suggested a cocktail of factors may be involved in relationship problems.
First may be that the personal traits that are likely to lead someone to choose entrepreneurship are not necessarily the same traits as those needed to maintain a happy emotional relationship The self-employed have to be self reliant, self confident and are often driven, but if these traits are carried across into personal relationships their partners may experience the self-employed as being selfish, controlling and arrogant.
The actions of some who enter self-employment has been likened to obsessive compulsive behaviour. They can be oblivious to everything going on around them except the business and many will, over the years, move from one enterprise to another whether success or failure. Henry Ford and Anita Roddick are examples of repeated failures before finally succeeding. James Dyson is reputed to have made 500 prototypes before having a vacuum cleaner he could market. A woman would need the dedication of a train-spotter’s wife to live with such an obsession. Indeed, in different circumstances, such total obsession would be interpreted as a form of addiction.
And there are relationship-damaging practical considerations, not least of which is that self-employment income is not guaranteed from month to month. Returns may not be regular and the businessman may not know exactly how much money they can withdraw from the business until months after each year end. This can be hard enough for the self-employed person, himself, but it can be unbearable for a partner who has not had prior experience of this. It frequently puts an unacceptable pressure on the couple’s financial arrangements and the attempts to restrict a partner’s spending can be interpreted as controlling behaviour. Not knowing how much can be spent on the necessities of life because a partner either can’t or won’t disclose their earnings can be irksome, particularly if all one’s friends have partners who have a regular salary cheque coming in.
Some couples have faced financial ruin through one partner starting a business without consulting the other and even borrowing money against their home to finance risky enterprises. This failure in communication and difference in the approach to risk taking can be too much for some couples to survive.
To run a successful business usually means working long hours and always being available in the evening and at weekends to answer the phone and to handle emergencies that no one else can deal with. Many partners find that they have to manage the home, the family and maintain social connections without the support of their self-employed partner. Holidays cannot be planned, or they are spoiled by business emergencies, and partners may find themselves to all intents and purposes being in a relationship yet living a single parent kind of existence with their children.
It is no secret that those who lead a demanding life can often be demanding and critical of others around them. Often, with few or no employees upon whom to vent their feelings, it is their partner and children who bear the brunt of the businessman’s pent up frustrations. Or the self-employed, bearing the whole weight of responsibility alone with no one at work to share their worries, may bring them home as stress that the whole family have to endure. Daniel Defoe in the eighteenth century noted that many a shopkeeper, when provoked by the impertinence of his customers, would go upstairs to beat his wife and kick his children like dogs.
Not all those who become self employed do so through choice and for many self employment is the only work available to them. There are some whose character makes them unsuitable for any job where they have to take orders from others. This is particularly so if they have had a problem with authority figures in their past. Sometimes the actions of an overbearing, critical father produce a child who, through their resulting insecurity, is unwilling ever to risk the criticism of an employer or to take another’s orders. And there are some who, having no formal training, use a kind of natural cunning to make a living through their own enterprise. The self confidence that the entrepreneur is assumed to possess may be missing. Rather, they may be insecure and suspicious of others which can show itself in them being uncommunicative and secretive within their personal relationships, and distant from their partners.
Rather than being unemployed, many have chosen to be jobbing labourers, running a pub or taking on home-working, only to find they make a borderline income that leaves their family poorly provided for and resentful. Particularly for women, the temptation of being self-employed, even doing something mundane like stuffing envelopes at home, may seem easier than finding a child-minder so as to be able to go out to work. But this can leave them feeling trapped and isolated, and the affect on their family life and relationships can be devastating.
In some families there is a culture of being self employed that is passed on from generation to generation. Family members learn the rules of being a business family as children and consider this the correct and proper way to earn a living when they grow up. If both partners come from this background then both know what to expect in having a relationship which may have to take second place to the business. But if you have had no previous experience of this way of life, being in a relationship with a self-employed partner can be like going to live with an alien.
More often than not it is the emotional partner who first notices that things are not as they should be. They may be baffled by their partner’s behaviour that is completely beyond their experience, and when they tackle their partner about it they often find them to be on a completely different wavelength, feeling equally hurt and unsupported. It can be difficult to explain to someone who has the very best of intentions and is clearly working hard that they are being selfish and thoughtless in their treatment of you and the children. Frequently the partner is at the end of their tether before the self employed person realises how hurtful their behaviour has been and by then it is often too late for the relationship. In many cases those who have invested all their time and attention into their business never do understand why their actions are despised by their partners.
While this phenomenon of self-employment and failing relationships has been little researched by either the business or the counselling community, Denis Sharp is anxious to make relationship-counsellors and business advisors more aware of the problem. More information is needed, so anyone having experienced relationship problems arising from self-employment could help in the continuing research.
Denis is asking the self-employed and/or their partners to assist his research by visiting the Survey Monkey website to anonymously complete a simple on-line questionnaire.
If you or someone you know can help in this research you should Google www.suveymonkey.com/s/K7WWK52 to view and complete the questionnaire.