My Boyfriend is Burning Me Out

What happens when burnout doesn't come from work, but instead, the people you love most in your life?

Replace “boyfriend” in the title above with “girlfriend,” “partner,” “wife,” “husband,” “friend,” “sister” - whatever - and the statement still works. The first two entries of this newsletter have primarily focused on our relationship to work: how the dynamic with your manager, the never-ending demands of your job, or the circular conversations with your nagging sense of inadequacy can lead to diagnosable “burnout.” But I want to go on record and share that deep down, I feel like our interpersonal relationships are, in fact, the most destructive, and the biggest culprit in creating burnout. At least, they have been for me.

This is hard to write about. I will not be naming names. And I don’t want to throw anyone under the metaphorical bus, here. Hopefully you read this piece in its entirety, because by the end, you’ll see that even when your interpersonal relationships fuel or cause your burnout, it’s still your fault, and it’s still your job to fix it. If life has taught me anything, it’s that when someone burns you out - they drain you, take too much from you, and exhaust you beyond comprehension - it’s because you let them.

Okay. Deep breaths. Let’s go.

My most recent long-term relationship was quite tricky, to say the least. As two founders building, struggling, winning and losing under the same roof, we never really had a reprieve from the intensity and exhaustion that comes with building a business from scratch. I was further along in my startup journey. I had already raised venture financing, had multiple stores open in Brooklyn and New York, and was somewhat accustomed to hiring people, firing people, fucking up, and all the challenges of scaling this living, breathing thing. My boyfriend was an aspiring founder, and I thought that love meant helping him. Materially. Armed with my beautiful but dangerous generosity of spirit, I felt inspired to connect him with investors, his co-founder, and early employees. He never asked me. I want to be clear about that. He never asked me, but I did it, because given how I saw my mom and dad operate, I thought that’s what loving him was supposed to look like. I initiated and normalized that dynamic, and from that chapter on, we were kind of locked into it for good.

In this case, I was a Professional Helper, but women helping men in other material ways is nothing knew. In “The Case for Marrying an Older Man,” the recent and controversial viral piece in The Cut, the writer describes this trope in detail:

“There is a boy out there who knows how to floss because my friend taught him. Now he kisses college girls with fresh breath. A boy married to my friend who doesn’t know how to pack his own suitcase…A million boys who know how to touch a woman, who go to therapy because they were pushed, who learned fidelity, boundaries, decency, manners, to use a top sheet and act humanely beneath it, to call their mothers, match colors, bring flowers to a funeral and inhale, exhale in the face of rage, because some girl, some girl we know, some girl they probably don’t speak to and will never, ever credit, took the time to teach him. All while she was working, raising herself, clawing up the cliff-face of adulthood. Hauling him at her own expense.”

The “hauling him at her own expense” like really gutted me, because by the end of my last relationship, that’s exactly how I felt. I burned myself out to brighten him up. I was pivoting my own company from a retail business to a wholesale marketplace, trying to raise capital, writing and marketing my book, managing my direct reports - all while playing pillow-talk startup-advisor at night. At some point, I spoke up, and started getting compensated for my labor. And I’m proud of myself for that inflection point, and I’m grateful to my former partner for hearing me out, and doing what we both knew was right. But I think what I really wanted to say was not: “I should be getting paid for this,” but rather, “I really don’t have the capacity to do this right now, and it needs to stop.”

Interpersonal burnout, in my opinion, is a failure of honesty.

If you don’t want to see that friend because they’re an energy vampire - don’t go. Tell them, kindly, you don’t have the bandwidth or the stamina but will reach back out when circumstances change. And then stop making plans with them. Just stop.

If you don’t want to play therapist to your sibling on the one day a week you can finally rest and relax - tell them, kindly, you don’t have the capacity this week, but you’re open to finding time the following week to talk things out.

If you don’t have the focus or empathy in the tank to unpack a work issue with your wife at 9PM, after you had a grueling day yourself - tell her you’re not in the best mental place to fully hear and support her, and ask if you can make breakfast together on Sunday to talk things through.

This is why I love my friends who bail on me if they’re too tired or moody or stressed to keep our plans. When they are honest with me, it opens the door for me to be honest with them when I’m the one who can’t meet their needs in the exact moment they need me. Besides, I don’t want to spend time with a friend who is mentally drained, or somewhere else. I don’t want my brother to quasi-therapize me through an issue after back-to-back work flights, if all he wants to do is order in sushi and watch WW2 documentaries. I don’t want Dave (my new partner) to help me unpack an issue at work if he himself is on-edge. I want my need to take, and someone’s ability to give, to line up when it feels good and authentic for both parties.

Because otherwise, people start interpreting their give-and-take as some sort of emotional loan, or transaction.

In reflecting on my last relationship, I can see a lot of what went wrong. In so many moments, I gave when I had no gas in the tank. He gave to me under the exact same conditions. We were bad at setting boundaries, eking out what little charge we had left to supercharge the other. And after years and years of that, even if you start setting boundaries, it becomes impossible to respect them, because everything feels tit-for-tat. You forever store the resentment of giving when you shouldn’t have, and expect the other person to do the same for you.

“I’m sorry, baby, I can’t be there for you this weekend, because I’m dealing with XYZ. But I’ll make a dinner reservation for us on Monday so we can unpack it and talk everything out.”

“Okay?? But when YOU were going through XYZ, I dropped everything to be there for you. I cancelled X and did Y. I can’t believe this.”

Never forget: you are forever teaching someone how to treat you. With every accommodation you make, every boundary you set, every bit of energy you give, and when, you are showing someone what is and is not acceptable. You are showing them what to expect. Because I didn’t set boundaries in the beginning, when I finally tried to, it felt confusing and hurtful. Which I understand. But in the reverse, in the moments he dropped everything for me, he was teaching me that was okay. That I can and should expect that of him moving forward.

He was burning himself out for me, and expected me to do the same for him.

I was burning myself out for him, and when I started my healing journey - of being honest with myself, and with others, about my capacity - it felt like a betrayal.

Looking back, I gave him so much material support because I wanted him to succeed - and felt he deserved it. But also, because I wanted to prevent him from failing.

Sacrificing yourself, whether it time, money, care, or emotional labor, to prevent someone else from experiencing the natural, often negative outcomes of their circumstances or situation - that is not love.

Loving someone is actively listening to a person’s circumstances or situation, and processing the potential negative outcomes of whatever they’re going through, and offering support that does not inherently feel sacrificial to you. This is an example of what that may have looked like for me, back then:

“I am struggling to find early employees for Business X. I’m not sure where to look and it’s overwhelming me.” - him

“I’m sorry to hear that, honey. What can I do to help you feel less overwhelmed? Do you want to go on a walk later or talk it out over dinner?” - me

Versus a version of what actually happened:

“I am struggling to find early employees for Business X. I’m not sure where to look and it’s overwhelming me.” - him

“I’m sorry to hear that, honey. I know person A, person B, person C. I can reach out to all of them to see if they’re available, and then connect you on email. I can also send a list of sites I’ve used to find entry level employees. I’ll get it done later tonight.” - me

I answered this way despite having a zillion bajillion things to do myself. Helping him was, and felt like, a sacrifice. I sacrificed my own peace to fix his overwhelm. But now I know that my job, as a lover, is to help unpack, calm and understand the overwhelm. My job is NOT to fix it, or make it go away. Knowing this now has saved me from a LOT of ongoing interpersonal burnout. It’s a perspective shift that truly changed my life.

A big part of doing this well, though, has to do with accepting your own limits. Even if I WANTED to help him fix his overwhelm, given my to-do list, the demands of my own job, and my own exhaustion, I shouldn’t have. But seeing myself as anything BUT superhuman meant I was weak. Now, when I feel myself hitting a ceiling or reaching a limit, I’m able to recognize that noticing and vocalizing the limit is actually the thing that makes me strong.

So I ask you:

• Are you communicating your limits in your interpersonal relationships, or bleeding out for someone else at your own expense, over and over again?

• When you DO set boundaries or limits with people, are they respected? Is there anyone in your life who is, potentially, overextending themselves to YOU, so they expect you to do it back?

• Have you thought about how your interpersonal relationships are effecting your sense of burnout? Or have you just been focusing on work?

• Are you loving the right way or the wrong way? Do you burn yourself out trying to prevent people from experiencing the negative outcomes of their current circumstances or situation? Or do you simply hold space for them, and only offer material help when it doesn’t FEEL like a sacrifice?

• Are you honest with yourself about your own limits? Or do you think you can “do it all” so you give yourself over to someone else’s needs, only to realize or feel later that you overextended yourself to this person?

• Do you need help recognizing your limits and emotional ceilings? Are you in touch with your body? Will you be able to notice the inside signals before they become deafening screams?

Recovery Resources

I have a few traditional resources below but wanted to flag one quick resource / note before I go there.

I think it’s really important to flag that if you set boundaries with people because you’re burning out, or have limited capacity, and they don’t accept that or they resent you for it - you may need to let them go. Those people are toxic, controlling, and in my experience, view most interpersonal interactions as emotional transactions, like the ones I described above. Obviously, the example I’m about to give does not apply if a friend experienced something truly traumatic - if a friend’s parent just passed, or they were assaulted, or hospitalized, for example. There are plenty of instances where as a friend, you SHOULD drop everything, and swallow your shit for their sake. I’m talking about more minor life issues and inconveniences - not truly tragic events.

Okay, so if you say to a friend: ‘I am so sorry you’re going through this but I can’t be there for you today. I have my own personal/work/family stuff going on and need the day to myself. I appreciate you understanding and I love you. LMK if you’re around on day XYZ.’

And they say ANYTHING along the lines of: “but I was there for you when X,” or “I wasn’t expecting that from you,” or “I’m really hurt. I can’t believe you.”

Then you need to reassess what’s going on, and what’s BEEN going on in the friendship.

Responses like this signal to me that a person is giving to you when they don’t THEMSELVES have the capacity. But how the fuck are you supposed to know that? If a friend didn’t have the capacity, but gave to you anyway, that’s not your fault. That’s THEIR fault. It kind of paints this picture of someone who gives to you, even when they don’t “feel like it,” as a way to put some sort of deposit on getting your support later on. It’s icks me out. I don’t like it. And it’s dehumanizing of them to ignore your current emotional state and needs, just because they ignore their own.

Mic drop on that for now. Some juicy resources I loved this week, below!

Are We Born to Work, or Born to Live? - The Happiness Lab unpacks the age-old question and does a truly fabulous job.

A Valuable Life Lesson for a Happier Life: The Mayo Jar Experiment - A little silly, a little camp, but a great 3 minute video outlining how to redesign your life so your happiest and most fulfilling activities get priority.

Designing Your Life: How to Live a Well-lived, Joyful Life - A longer, but still easy breezy read on how to restructure your life so the yummiest, most expansive and delightful parts get the most square footage. I read this last year when I was recovering from burnout and really unsure how to rebuild my life into one I would not just tolerate, but actually love. The authors teach design at Stanford and apply “design thinking” to the question of “how to love your life” which feels like a fresh and new take, and not super self-helpy.

The bigger picture

I’m skipping The Bigger Picture today because my friend Sarah is in town before she moves to Lisbon, and I want to bask in the sun with her and be silly girls eating bagels and sipping ice coffee in the park. She quit her hot shit agency job a while back and has been working freelance and traveling the world for almost 3 years. Reply back if you want me to interview her for this newsletter because I think she’s an incredible example of someone who said “fuck it” to the American hustle and has successfully paved her own way, designed her own life, and found a new brand of happiness on her own terms.

Talk soon,

Ali 🧘‍♀️

***quick note: any feelings, memories or conversations re-staged or attributed to anyone in this piece come from my own recollections and interpretations. Everything stated is my interpretation and opinion of an interpersonal dynamic and by no means the end-all-be-all interpretation. Much love.***