Heartache 24/7-When Love Feels Harder Than Work
For many of us, work has a clear shape. Problems arrive with deadlines, solutions can be measured, and effort is rewarded with progress we can see.
Love is not like that.
Love moves at a different pace — slower, quieter, less obedient to calendars — and for people who have learned to live through achievement, it can feel strangely more exhausting than any workload.
Each Valentine’s Day circles back as a reminder. We think of someone who has been waiting while we pursued ambitions, held positions, solved crises, and kept life running. Rarely is love neglected on purpose. It simply slips behind the next milestone, the next urgent email, the habit of typing while a partner is still talking. Intimacy becomes something scheduled for “later,” and later keeps drifting further away.
I often meet people who are brilliant at work yet lost at home. One client described how teamwork had taken over her family. Everyone performed their roles so well that there was little room left to breathe. They stopped calling each other during the day. He made decisions intensely at work; she made decisions intensely around the house. When evening came, being together felt like another task to complete. What they both longed for were evenings that felt like home, not overtime. Even the gentle language of affection kept shtum, words began to sound empty, sometimes painful with increasing awkward presense.
Success can feel like a crown — but it can also be heavy. While achievements grow, the connection we most need quietly thins. Many discover that they have become experts at solving external problems yet beginners at speaking the simplest words of the heart.
Work exercises our ability to manage life.
Love exercises our ability to feel alive.
For those who have walked fast for a long time, slowing down can be frightening. They worry they no longer know how to love, or that the people beside them have already travelled too far ahead. The path back can feel more demanding than any professional challenge.
This is where support matters. A coach is not there to judge how busy you are, but to help you notice what has been forgotten — the small gestures, the unspoken needs, the courage to pause for ten minutes and choose connection.
Coaching creates a place to untangle the habits of constant doing, to remember how to speak honestly, and to rebuild intimacy at a pace two people can walk together.
Love does not require grand rescues. It asks for moments: a message at lunch, a conversation without screens, a willingness to be still long enough to listen.
These are skills, and like any skill they can be relearned, once we notice the patterns that have quietly taken charge.
If finding love, maintaining love, or discovering love again feels harder than work itself, you don’t have to figure it out alone. Sometimes the bravest decision is to let someone walk beside you — so the road back to each other becomes possible again.
Work will always wait ten minutes.
Love may not.
If this story feels close to your own, coaching can offer a steady place to begin again. In a confidential, unhurried space we can look at what work has crowded out, find words for what has been difficult to say, and rebuild the small steps that allow trust and warmth to return.
I can walk with you beyond the worries and help you shape a pace that two hearts can share. A short conversation is often enough to begin.