the captain's table

Melba and her husband Aaron were having a normal type of holiday in Greece when they received a surprise invitation to join a party touring the Greek islands in a luxury yacht. Naturally they jumped at the chance - it was free! - but the experience drove a wedge between Melba and Aaron that nearly ended their marriage.

"We had wondered why we had been chosen from hundreds of tourists to join the yacht party," laughs Melba, "and being vain we concluded - quite rightly as it turned out - that we had been chosen because we were young and good looking."

"However," adds Melba, "it was my good looks that counted - not Aaron's - and this fact became apparent on the first night on board."

"A cabin boy approached me and told me to wear something really special for dinner that night because I had been selected to sit next to the yacht owner - also the captain of the yacht."

"Aaron was thrilled to bits and naturally expected to be sitting next to me," says Melba, "but when we arrived for dinner the steward ushered Aaron to the far end of the table."

"The captain and his wife were late arriving for dinner so I had a very uncomfortable time sitting at the top of the table - on the captain's left side - trying to make light conversation with a strange man on my left with Aaron glaring at me from the far end of the table."

"When the yacht owner and his wife arrived at the dinner table everyone stood up and cheered," laughs Melba. "By then we were all slightly drunk!"

"The guy was a lot younger than I had expected him to be," says Melba, "and his wife was a stunning young blonde."

"Throughout the dinner the two of them quizzed me with questions and at one stage the yacht owner put his hand on my knee," laughs Melba.

"My gut feeling told me that this couple was interested in a threesome - and poor old Aaron was totally superfluous."

"Every time I glanced down the table at Aaron he was glaring at me and I expected trouble from him after the dinner."

"When Aaron and I got together later he was furious at me," laughs Melba. "Not because I had sat next to the captain but because I hadn't asked for him to be moved up the table to sit with me."

"Aaron wasn't interested in what the captain and his wife had talked to me about - and I didn't tell him," says Melba. "He was just totally consumed with what he considered to be an insult to him that I had presumably collaborated in."

"I reminded Aaron that we were guests on the yacht and it would have been rude for me to have queried the seating arrangements - but he was adamant that I was remiss."

"The next night - after a very frosty day with Aaron that everybody must have noticed - we were both relieved when some other woman was chosen to sit on the captain's left hand side."

"Aaron and I sat at the end of the table together - and peace resumed in our relationship," laughs Melba. "I never told Aaron what I suspected the deal was between the couple and whatever woman sat with them - but I think he got the drift of what was going on."

"I suppose if the shoe had been on the other foot and I had been forced to sit with the plebeians while my husband was with royalty I guess I would have felt the same."

"But I wouldn't have directed my anger at Aaron," says Melba. "I would have directed it at the yacht owner. They were obviously looking for a complaint couple - and when you consider that there's no such thing as a free holiday I suppose we were lucky that they didn't feed us to the sharks for being troublesome!"


Melba's story first appeared as melba: greek cruising and is reprinted with permission.

marriage, a supportive partnership

When both Jin and her husband, Rick, found themselves out of work she was thrilled to find another job before their money ran out until she discovered, among other things, that she has to work with a really nasty and abusive co-worker.

"I want to quit, but without my income, we would have to start selling things in order to survive," says Jan, "and while I'm as upset as Rick is at the prospect of having to sell the house and contents we had worked so hard to buy, I am far more concerned about my health and well-being at this new job."

"I have been in the workforce long enough to know that every workplace has its normal share of interpersonal problems. However, in cases where hostility from a boss, manager or co-worker is severely affecting my performance and well-being -  then I know it is not a good idea to stick it out expecting things to change."

"When this sort of thing happened to me in the past," says Jin, "I very quickly and smartly quit the job before real trouble arose. If I follow Rick’s advice and stick it out at my present job I'll eventually crack under the strain of being ‘nice’ and this will result in my future career being tarnished."

"Interpersonal problems at work are always seen as the fault of two people," sighs Jin, "even though one person causes the trouble."

"I’m the last born in my family and I got blamed for everything. My eldest sister was particularly good at making me her fall guy. Be damned if I’m going to be made a scapegoat at work for something that is not my fault."

Jin feels that her best option is to quit immediately on some pretext, rather than stick it out and end up having a blow-up with the co-worker that will ruin her prospects of finding another job easily.

"Rick disagrees with me and says I'm lucky to get a job and shouldn’t let the co-worker affect me," sighs Jin, "but if the shoe were on the other foot I'd be telling Rick to get out of that place as fast as he can."

"Why can't he see how this job is affecting me?"

Jin is now not only stressed out at work dealing with an abusive co-worker, but she's also fighting Rick on the home front. She feels he should be supporting her decision to quit, not forcing her to stay at a stressful job; and she also feels he is not trying hard enough to find work and is just sponging on her.

"Easy for him to say I should stick out this lousy job when he’s home watching television," scoffs Jin. "Marriage is supposed to be a supportive partnership, isn't it?"
"If Rick would just show me a little support -- and do something nice for me like cooking dinner before I get home I might be able to stick the job out," says Jin, "but because he's not doing anything to help me, or help himself get a job, I get the feeling that all he cares about is the money I bring home." 

Job loss and job stress are common factors causing marital difficulties - and Jin and Rick will probably weather out their current problems - yet it is interesting that while ‘irreconcilable differences’ is a common basis for divorce it is never used in job resignation. Until it becomes as common a reason for job resignations as it is in divorce, it is an unfortunate fact of working life that people like Jin would rather lie than admit that an interpersonal problem was the main reason for their resignation.

 Read more of Jin's story:

  the workplace ogre

passionate or workaholic housewife?

Edwina has three dependent children and a husband, Tim, who barely earns enough to support the family. He is happy for her to be a stay at home mom, but she feels a need to work for personal fulfillment as well as extra income.

Her children are too young for her to take on the responsibility of a job right now, but she is gearing up for the return to work process and with it is having some pretty heavy discussions with Tim about why she needs to work

"I’m a house-proud mom," explains Edwina, "and Tim feels that I’m a perfectionist and a workaholic. I disagree with him and try to get him to see the difference between workaholism and passion. I am passionate about my home and family, and will probably be passionate about a job when I get one, and I don’t see passion as being unhealthy."

"I’m an only child," adds Edwina, "and my parents are passionate and hard-working people and they aren’t workaholics. There’s balance in their lives and a lot of fun, too, and that’s the way I am."

Edwina explains that when you're passionate about something, or someone, your life is filled with pleasure and while it is difficult to get your passion out of your mind, you can drop it for a while - sometimes for a long period of time - and enjoy normal relationships and activities and a good night's sleep.

"Workaholism, on the other hand," explains Edwina, "doesn’t make you a happy camper and you can't put down the work. You're obsessed with it. You're consumed by a desire to work and you seemingly don't care about anything else."

Edwina adds that some people just cannot relate workaholism to anything other than work, but it is very clearly a dis-ease that manifests in other areas of our lives. People can exhibit workaholism at home and at play as well as at work. In fact, she argues that if anyone is a workaholic in the family it is Tim with his sport.

"He has never missed a game in his life and always puts his sport before our needs," says Edwina. "It’s something that I accepted about him before marriage, and I don’t complain about it, but I think it’s unfair of Tim to call me a workaholic when much of what I do at home is either motivated by passion or something I have to do because if I don’t, nobody else will."

Edwina explains that a passionate person inspires others, a workaholic doesn't. In being a house-proud mom, Edwina is inspiring her children to be clean and tidy. Tim, on the other hand, is inspiring nobody with his obsession for sport.

She further explains that not only does workaholism deny the workaholic a normal life, but it also denies a normal life to those who have the misfortune to love them or live with them.

When Tim is watching sport on television, he is not only denying himself the exercise he needs but also denying the family the pleasure of his company. He is also disrupting family life for hours on end.

"When I am vacuuming the house," says Edwina, "the family may be inconvenienced for a while, but ultimately everyone appreciates living in a clean house. Tim’s obsession with sport benefits nobody."

Edwina thinks that too many house-proud women are incorrectly labeled as workaholics, or compulsive obsessive maniacs or just plain neurotics.

"I don’t run around obsessively picking up after Tim and the children," declares Edwina, "and I don’t look for dirt to clean, but Tim seems to think that if I enjoy keeping the house clean that there must be something wrong with me. And my desire to get back to work, on top of what I do already at home, really perplexes him."

"Sure, he appreciates how having extra income would be nice," she says, "but he can’t understand that I am a passionate person and will need a new interest once the kids are at school."

There are plenty of people who call workaholism a ‘healthy’ addiction, but Edwina sees nothing healthy about a compulsive or neurotic desire to work. No matter what the work is, if it consumes a person's life to the detriment of normal relationships and activities and sleep, Edwina believes it is a dis-ease.

"Sure," says Edwina, "there are workaholic housewives, but I don’t spend all day and most of the night, every day, year in year out, dusting, cleaning, washing, ironing and vacuuming and, not content with the perfection of my work, going over it time and time again. And I don’t deny Tim and the children a normal home in which they can relax, and a normal wife and mother with whom they can have fun and share love and affection. I am there for them at all times."

Edwina is passionate about her home and family because she wants to please them, and in returning to work one day she wants to please everyone by bringing in more money to buy nice things that everyone can enjoy - as well as fulfilling her personal need to have meaningful work.

"Workaholics," says Edwina, "please nobody - not their loved ones who want a normal, loving relationship with them; not their co-workers who feel threatened by their manic activity; and not themselves. Workaholics are just not happy people. They operate on a high level of anxiety, always worrying if they missed something or didn't do a good enough job. And if you tear them away from their work they have panic attacks. They may begrudgingly go through the motions of whatever it is you want them to do, but their minds will be elsewhere - on work or whatever it is they are obsessed with."

"It's probable," says Edwina, "that workaholics please their bosses and, in the case of house-proud wives, the vicar or some other ‘important’ personage who calls at their home unexpectedly, but bosses and vicars really don't count."

Edwina believes that when asked who are they pleasing, workaholics can't give you an answer that makes sense. Either there is someone in their past they are trying to please - in which case workaholism is merely a manifestation of an infantile desire to please somebody they could never please in childhood - or the brain wiring in workaholics is skewed.

"If the latter," muses Edwina, "then maybe it is the same skewed wiring that causes other addictions - sex, drugs, alcohol, smoking, gambling and, in Tim’s case, an obsession with sport."

"A passion, on the other hand," says Edwina, "is pleasurable and causes no pain - even if the possibility of pursing the passion is denied. A passion does not interfere with normal relationships and activities and sleep. I certainly wouldn’t be in pain if someone stopped me from doing housework for a week! The person who would be in pain is Tim - he can’t find a shirt without my help, and he goes berserk if disturbed when watching sport."

Also, Edwina believes that a passion is often shared with others and this is another clue by which it can be differentiated from workaholism.

When Edwina and Tim were first married, they were both passionate about renovating the old house they had bought. They took years to complete it and they sometimes stayed up all night finishing something off, but they lived for the day when it was completed and they could enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Their friends thought they were nuts working so hard on the old house, but Edwina and Tim were fired by passion - not love for work. In fact, it was because she had worked so hard on renovating the house that Edwina is now so passionate about keeping it looking good.

"Workaholics," says Edwina, "rarely include others in their obsession with work - or whatever it is they are obsessed by - and often nobody would want to get involved as workaholism is often centered on very boring stuff. A workaholic housewife, to me, would be someone who dusts the furniture so much that it has lost its shine. I’m not like that!"

When Edwina gets around to returning to work she is aware that life is going to be more difficult, but she looks forward to finding an interesting job, something she can be passionate about, and she has no intention of taking work home, working late and working weekends and holidays or otherwise allowing work to interfere with what really matters in her life - her home and her family.

"Even though my parents were wonderful and my childhood was a dream," explains Edwina, "I never thought we were a real family. Everyone else had sisters and brothers, I didn’t. I have a real family now, and there’s no way that I am going to allow a job to spoil that."