In recently helped out at plotting the future of a company after being acquired. On a side note, I had an almost philosophical discussion with friend that studies psychology whether or not marriages are easier divorced than jobs quit. My argument was that marriages are much more emotional, and failure will hurt much more than an unpleasant job. Funny enough in a job there are always other people to blame, outside factors that were beyond our control, and some companies actually embrace the thought that mistakes are there to be made and learned from (yes. only a few companies actually really embrace that.)
In a marriage, there shouldn’t be any blame but the same forgiveness for an honest mistake or misstep. However, I think we know very well who’s to blame is something goes wrong, and there are really not that many people in a marriage that could take any responsibility. A personal failure will more likely affects us emotionally – unless our company is our personal hobby – and if we’re not able to generously share some forgiveness (giving is sharing and needs at least two people), we’ll drift apart pretty quickly.
My psychology friend countered that because a personal split up will affect our personal (real) life much more directly, we will go really out of our way to avoid that change with considerably greater negative effects on our lives than ‘hanging in there’.
It would be interesting to see some statistics about marriage and divorce cycles and compare them with employment cycles. Maybe there are some similar patterns, or it would prove my point wrong, and we have much more divorces than people switching jobs – which I doubt.
I’ll lookup some statistics about jobs and employment, and she will dig out the divorce statistics… I’ll keep you posted…
