I see workaholism as basically identical to emotional unavailability

Pretty sure workaholics don’t see it that way. And that seems like a fairly inevitable conflict point if you’re dating someone who works a lot. Your opinion seems clear, you don’t want to date a workaholic.

Myself, I would probably have some of the same problems you have. Not sure if I’d want to be with someone who is routinely unavailable. But there it’s a trade off, people need a job, I’m sure I’d tolerate it to a point. Not sure where that breaking point would be specifically. I’ve noticed people who are workaholics usually have a work hard phase then a play hard phase, where they spend a bunch of money and own a bunch of random toys. Even though they’re usually only available like 3 days a month to use them. I’m not as much of a ‘big splurge purchase’ kind of person. So not sure that personality type would do well with me.

I am the workaholic in my marriage, it’s tougher on my wife then myself.

I’m self employed, and am only working to improve our lives. Obviously people have different needs in a relationship but i don’t think it’s a deal breaker.

I find a solid work ethic and goals to be attractive. Someone who is content to just muddle through life with no real aspirations, beyond going home to watch TV after work or goals that are so far out of reach they won’t be attained is frustrating to me.

This isn’t a direct answer, but from your other comments, I think it’s useful advice.

Talk to a therapist about this. If you don’t have one, find one. You sound unhappy in your relationship. Sometimes that’s strictly a relationship problem, but often there’s personal work that needs to be done. Doing that personal work might help you be happy in your current relationship or it might help you leave that relationship and transition to something better.

I think you’re in a unique type of hell here. The thing about small-medium sized business owners is that they can either tired themselves to the bone or not… it’s ultimately a choice, and she would be so much healthier (mental and physical) if she took the choice to release her workload. Any good business needs failsafes; she needs someone under her to manage the hectic stuff. Once you’re past startup phase you can’t allow your business to halt on account of one key worker taking a sick day or being overworked. Your girlfriend is that key staff member in her business, she’s made herself take all the burden. No more!

Anyway, would I personally date a workaholic? My first response was “Absolutely. I’d enjoy making it my job to help them take the edge off from work and relax again.” However, what you present is soooooooo so so more extreme than my idea of a workaholic. So now I just feel embarrassed. Hope your partner can have a less hectic work life soon (in a positive sense. Begone, monkeys paw!)

I think to me it would depend on what that work was and the person’s attitude towards it. I dated a doctor who complained a lot about how her hospital was making her see too many patients, how the patients were rude to her, and how she had to spend her “free time” at home on paperwork she didn’t have time to do while at work. I was not happy feeling like I was less important to her than a job she didn’t even enjoy. I might have felt otherwise if she absolutely loved her job. (She did see being a doctor as an important duty, and when we talked about this she was hurt that I saw it as a negative because from her point of view it was an example of how she was loyal and dedicated.)

Workaholic is just a tight framing around priorities. Someone who focuses too much on work is ordering their priorities in a certain way. All the excuses in the word don’t change that.

Every time they spend their time on their job, it’s a decision to not spend that time on something or someone else.

Maybe that’s critical to their long term survival. Maybe it’s not. Maybe they are chasing success and will reach it. Or not. Maybe they’re doing that because their parents were like that and it’s learned behaviour.

But it doesn’t matter. People don’t really change that much in the long term. Don’t stick around because you think they will “improve”. This is who she is. If you’re ok with that, set your expectations appropriately. If not, make a hard decision sooner rather than later.

The usual issue I see with people complaining about workaholics is time commitment, not emotional availability.

I would never date a workaholic. I value work/life balance too much on the life side for a workaholic to be compatible with me. I also do not care about money outside of being able to afford to keep a roof over my head and food on the table.

A relationship needs all parties to put forth effort in maintaining it. There can be temporary imbalances that a relationship survives through, but it shouldn’t be the basis for which the relationship is founded.

I could maybe understand if they were starting a business - since they can take a lot of time and effort to get off the ground. Of course that comes with the assumption that eventually they can stop spending so much time.

I’ve started thinking that “workaholism” is just a societally approved method of avoidance. Most self-described workaholics I’ve met are men who seem to dislike their wives and children. Working all the time lets them “provide for the family” while never actually being there for them.

Edit: I feel like I should point out that sometimes people do actually need to work so much to provide for their family - those aren’t the people I’m talking about.

Imagine someone who talks about work all the time.

They seem like someone you wouldn’t dig.

I’d be more interested in a more loose relationship than “dating” with someone like that. I’m just not really interested in committing myself to someone whose life doesn’t allow them to prioritize the relationship. I’ve been in situations with people like that though and it’s been fine. It’s not like I don’t know how to live a life without someone.

So I decided to ask the internet (DuckDuckGo (DDG) specifically): Am I dating a workaholic?

Why are you asking a search engine questions like it’s an AI?

Like you could phrase it as a question:

How to tell if dating workaholic

Or keywords:

Dating workaholic

Or even get fancy and use boolen operators…

But this:

Am I dating a workaholic?

How the fuck is a search engine going to answer that question? It can’t, it’ll just just throw up random articles

There’s nothing deeper than that here