Forbes.com - Magazine Article

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Surviving A Workaholic Spouse
Maureen Farrell, 11.19.09, 6:41 PM ET
When Beth Frazier took her three children for the family holiday portrait on a blustery Brooklyn afternoon last winter, her husband Eric was conspicuously absent. A jack of many trades, Eric routinely logged 100-hour weeks working as a mortgage broker, construction foreman and landlord on several multi-family investment properties. Days started at 6 a.m. and ended at 1 a.m.--including Saturdays, when the photo session was scheduled.

"I always say that 'I have kids,' because I'm the primary caretaker of the children," says Frazier, 40, who also worked 30 to 40 hours a week as a real estate broker.

Frazier felt that her husband's absence in last year's photo was a reflection of their family, so she made sure to display it prominently in their home. "If you put pictures around the house of family functions and your husband doesn't participate, sometimes it starts to register," she says. "My husband saw those portraits and said 'Oh my God, I'm not there.'"

Those photos--along with stress-related heart problems that sent him to the hospital three times last summer--gave Eric a wake-up call. Still, overworking is a hard habit to break: He still puts in plenty of 12-hour days.

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The Fraziers' situation is all too common, and even more so in the economic downturn. Marriages involving workaholics are twice as likely to end in divorce, according to a 1999 study by Bryan Robinson at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Luckily, the Fraziers are beating the odds--they are still together after eight years--but those long hours have taken their toll.

"The dollars are good, but the distraction is not," says ...

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http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/19/survive-workaholic-spouse-entrepreneurs-human-relations-workaholic_print.html

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