Everyone Wants the Love Story
False Promise #1: I thought work would make me happy.
In a prior post, I introduced the Four False Promises of Work. It’s my way of organizing all the stories, patterns and themes I have heard from clients, students and friends over 25 years - all in an effort to understand why work has such a hold on us and why it can be such a rollercoaster. You might want to start here.
I have a few go-to YouTube clips I watch when I need a lift: Olympic balance beam routines, Audrey Hepburn scenes from Charade, and that unforgettable moment in The Bear (Season 2) when Richie finally realizes his place in the restaurant as the beacon of hospitality. After a week’s internship at a top restaurant in Chicago, pushed and prodded to serve in a way he never has before, he drives home grinning, Taylor Swift’s “Love Story” playing on the radio.
That scene? Magical.
He’s found a love story: I’ve found my perfect fit. I’m seen and accepted for being myself. I can imagine a future like this.
For Richie, it’s not a romantic partner he’s found. It’s the perfect job.
This is the story of every graduation card and commencement platitude. We’re told to follow our passion. You gotta find a career you love. Do what lights you up. And then, you’ll never work a day in your life. It’s the happily-ever-after, romance-novel version of work.
We’ve been surrounded by messages that reinforce this expectation - social media glamorizing, magazine covers, TED Talks, the question: What’s your dream job? The message is that work can deliver the feelings you crave.
This is the false promise that work is supposed to make us happy.
When we believe this promise, we’re not satisfied by moments of fleeting pleasure. We’re on the hunt for a deep, consuming kind of felt experience: ongoing devotion, passion. That’s why this particular promise so often shows up as the pressure to love your job. Not just enjoy it, but to be enamored by it. To be all-in. Maybe even to have it love you back.
The story doesn’t unfold so simply for most of us. Or maybe it does, for a while. Then something changes. An industry shifts. Our roles become obsolete. Routine replaces novelty. Or, we change and what once lit us up no longer does. The spark fades. We start to wonder if we picked wrong, or whether we even know ourselves after all. Should we have gone to law school? Moved to another city? Chased that creative itch in our twenties?
One client once loved her consulting job. She relished the mental gymnastics of problem-solving, the client partnerships, the camaraderie of late-night hotel-bar dinners with sharp colleagues. For the first decade, she used language to describe how happy she was at work as though it was a love affair: intense, exhilarating, all-consuming. I love it.
Then something changed internally for her. What once energized her became draining. She dreaded airports. One trip, she called me in despair from the rental car lot, sick at the thought of another round of client pleasantries and another night in a hotel room.
What surprised her as we dove in was that the real heartbreak wasn’t about burnout - it was loss. She couldn’t imagine loving another job the way she’d loved this one. Like so many of us, she couldn't imagine who she was without this love story.
As this faded, what was left? Settling? Accepting a job that “treats her okay”? The despair wasn’t just about something ending - it was about losing something she believed made her happy.
Like a lot of love stories, there wasn’t a clean break. Her boss implored her to stay, she hung on too long, there were mismatched expectations, and many long conversations about how and when to end it. Her separation from the job took at least a year longer than planned.
The drama only deepened the attachment and painful feelings. When she finally exited she was depleted, feeling like she was starting a career over at 35.
What happens when we fall for the promise of a love story?
If there is a great love between you and your work, fantastic. I hope for all of us that there are times when that’s true.
It’s the career-long over-attachment to the false promise that work is supposed to make us happy, that it’s a timeless love story, that I watch for. Whether or not you and work are making beautiful music together, I’d suggest a gently observant eye for some of the things that may be at risk when we believe the false promise:
We don’t let ourselves grow into something new.
I had breakfast with a friend this week who is currently on sabbatical after 20 years in senior administrative healthcare roles. She needed a break after being caught in the love-sick cycle: giving everything, being disappointed, trying to move on, getting love-bombed with retention offers, and giving it all again. Deep in the loop, she never had the chance to update what feelings she actually wants from work at this point in her life. Pausing now gives her the space to develop clarity. When we chase the same feelings over and over without questioning, we can get stuck developmentally and professionally, never exploring the broader spectrum of what work can mean.
We miss a natural end when it’s happening, or we miss the signs that some loves are damaging.
Michael Phelps once described swimming as his sanctuary: “I feel most at home in the water. I disappear. That's where I belong.” But after years of relentless training and global competition, it wasn’t the same. Post the 2012 Olympics, despite winning six medals, he admitted, “I just wanted to be done with swimming and didn't want anything to do with the sport anymore.”
Passion can burn hot, but it can also burn us out. It can become exploitative, exhausting.
I’ve also seen the desire for happiness at work make us oblivious to how the love story has soured or become manipulative (think about the friend who repeatedly claims, “… but I love my job” even as she wears herself out, under-prices her work and skips her own doctor’s appointments).
We’re constantly chasing the euphoria of new love.
Just like the friend who jumps from relationship to relationship always seeking the next high, some people leap from job to job in pursuit of the next honeymoon phase. Early love is only rarely the model for lasting love. Our inherited ideas about loving our job don’t always survive contact with reality. They need to mature, just like we do.
Is it wrong to want to just love your job and be happy?
Not at all.
Still, this invites reflection. What does “loving your job” or “being happy at work” really mean to you?
How much are you giving? All the extra moments of your day? Your boundaries? Your other interests and commitments, all in the name of love?
What are you getting? Respect and dignity? True care for you as a whole being? Fairness? Or a more empty validation akin to the Giving Tree - giving into what seems like a bottomless pit of organizational need?
And, who are you in the love affair with work? Are you a strong, resilient, grounded partner? Are you able to grow, discover novel skills and perspectives, be appreciated as you develop and change? Accept others’ changes? Or are you anxious, gripping, always proving, afraid to take a leap or speak up for fear that they (the job, the organization, the leadership team, the profession) won’t accept your evolution?
Like any love, are you prepared for frustration, disappointment, forgiveness, renegotiation or endings?
What if I never fall in love with my work?
Most of us have to work. And feelings of love don’t pay the bills any better than more neutral experiences do. Not everyone finds passion in their job in every season of their life, and that doesn’t mean they’re doing it wrong.
There are other, deeply valid ways to view work: as a source of stability, a way to support your family, a place to learn or stay connected to a community. Work can be a chapter, not a calling. My friend Eric Johnson likes to remind us that sometimes work has meaning, and sometimes work is the means - pay, insurance, a place to go.
Will work ever love you back?
I think you know the answer. Organizations don’t owe us allegiance. Even the bosses who are loyal advocates and relentless supporters have tough decisions to make, and sometimes that means our love isn’t returned - we are overlooked, stuck in place or replaced.
I do believe we can experience intrinsic delight with the ingredients of our work. When we’re doing pieces of work that truly connect us with what we deeply enjoy doing and are effective at - creating, leading, writing, serving, organizing or whatever it is for you - we can find flow. We can feel interested, powerful, engaged.
The key? It’s not about staying tethered to one job, one title, one employer. Love turns into captivity when we cling too tightly to a single form.
What needs examining is our attachment to the idea that work should make us feel good all the time. That attachment can keep us in roles long after they fit or cause us to leave decent ones because we don’t feel butterflies.
Work isn’t always a love story. It’s a relationship - complex, evolving, requiring attention and adaptation. Sometimes what we’re asking from work - purpose, passion, make me feel happy - just isn’t something a job can reliably give. At least not all the time.
And yet, other feelings do come. Work can offer steadiness, curiosity, playfulness, pride. It can make you feel engaged, generous, appreciated, even peaceful. These may not sound like headline emotions - but they are deeply worthwhile. If your job gives you a sense of rhythm, lets you meet other commitments or lets you end the day feeling like you made something a little better, that might be enough.
These quieter experiences deserve as much recognition as great love does.
Let me be clear again, if you love your work - fantastic. Genuinely delighted for you.
But if you’re chasing a fairy tale ending, it may be time to create a new story with more room in it. I’ll offer more on how to do this another time.
For now, a few prompts:
A reflection: What’s the biography of the story that work had to make you happy? Where did those messages come from? What other feelings or sensations do you want from work? What do you feel now?
A practice: Notice moments of satisfaction (skip the search for fireworks). Where do you feel useful, engaged, curious or simply at ease? Good feelings at work may be more like contentment than electric chemistry.
Other resources: My cousin Marc Sardi is a Montreal-based florist, using his 20+ years of experience as a biologist and educator in an unexpected way. He recently visited the Cultivating Place podcast, where he tells his own story of work love gone wrong, passion exploitation and how’s he’s re-crafted the ingredients of his work (sustainability, botany, wildlife, teaching and art) into a meaningful, joy-filled career of designing spectacular florals.
Thanks for reading. Did this hit home? Drop me a note and let me know—or share it with someone who needs a boost.
Next week, I’ll explore the second false promise: “I thought work would make me important.” We’ll look at what it means to chase status through titles, ladder-climbing, and the need to prove ourselves — and what we might choose instead.