When being a workaholic works for you, and provides the rewards you are looking for in your career, is it really a problem? So what, if work replaces play, if the work is enjoyable? But what if it creates other problems?

What, Me Worry?

"I find myself saying 'you've got it pretty easy, quit your whining.' I'm not punching a time card, I don't have a normal job. I feel like I shouldn't be complaining because I still got it pretty good;" says JJ McAuliffe owner of McAuliffe's Pub, co-owner of McAuliffe's On The Square in Racine, WI. He adds a worry about how his customers see him, "I feel like if I took time away, they would think I didn't care. They don't see what I do when the bar isn't open. I could work a 9 hour shift, but if the public doesn't see it; they only see me in the bar for two hours they don't think I'm working."

This kind of "what will the clients think" worry is pretty common among workaholics and other workers who get a lot of their acceptance and confidence from praise and reassurance at work. Getting self-esteem from how others judge our performance at work can lead to a destructive cycle of, as Work-Anon calls it, "stinking thinking." The need to be available to customers at all waking hours causes stress on the worker, and on their support system. And often times, even their business suffers.

According to Dr. Bryan Robinson a leading psychologist and author in the field of workaholism, millions of Americans get caught in a lifestyle that produces the same physical and psychological symptoms that workaholics may have. In his book "Chained to the Desk," Dr. Robinson writes of the exhaustion, emotional distress, and relationship problems that crop up for people who spend a "disproportionate amount of time and emotional energy" on work.

Workaholic Relationships

The work wont hug you or love you back. Many workaholics and entrepreneurs work such long hours that their personal relationships bear the brunt of the sacrifice for the enjoyable vocation.

I, myself, would sometimes combine dates with working on my laptop. Thankfully, I had dates that were able to entertain themselves - usually with video games on their own computers - and talk to me when I took breaks from whatever project I was engrossed in.

It gets hard to maintain a serious relationship when my focus is honestly more about growing my businesses and helping business clients, rather than dropping what I'm working on to ease the mind of whoever I'm dating. It sounds selfish, but I did that a lot when I was younger, and just wont do it now. I just wont tolerate building a relationship with anyone who isn't understanding and supportive of the way I work.

"The relationship IS there to see," the long hours and the dinners interrupted by phone calls, JJ adds. Because he owns bars, his work time and social time are combined. "I'll sit down and have a drink and then someone will remind me or ask for something... I gotta leave whoever I'm sitting with, leave my drink, and sometimes I don't get back to the drink for a half-hour."

"It has greatly affected relationships. I'm a workaholic. I enjoy being a workaholic. My business comes first. Not just with love relationships, but with my mom, my family. It's caused a bit of a roller coaster for not just myself but those that care about me." Mr. McAuliffe seems most sad about the impact on his mother, who lives about a mile away. "'ll think 'I should go visit my mom,' and then a delivery truck shows up - I'll get distracted from going to visit her."

Master or Servant?

There's this mix of owning the businesses and being owned by the businesses. Yes, they're mine, I made them, I improve them. But there's also this sense of being a slave to them, sometimes. The customers, the profit, the pursuit, the necessary tedium can sometimes become the boss... of the boss.

JJ shares that when he worked a regular job, "I had vacation time and when my band went on tour I didn't have to ask any body I could just take my vacation and go on tour. Here, I'd have to get someone to run the bar my place."

"With this at least I can mix things up and do what I want. It's mine. I guess I prefer that I can make my own bed. If I want to make it with neat little hospital corners, I can. If it's messy, it's messy. But it's mine. If that makes any sense."