People Are Interested in Me Because of My Intense Job. But They Don’t Like What Comes With It.

Good Job Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Unsplash and Paul Bradbury/Getty Images Plus. Good Job is Slate’s advice column on work. Have a workplace problem big or small? Send it to Laura Helmuth and Doree Shafrir here. (It’s anonymous!) Dear Good Job, I have a very intense job (think death row criminal defense attorney). I’m very well-known in my field, and I mentor many mentor people who are newer in this work. My work is at times life or death. I am very lucky to have a wonderful romantic partner, a robust group of longtime friends, and a wonderful therapist. My issue is with some friends and family members. They who are disappointed when I have to cancel plans. I’ve put an immense amount of work into having work boundaries and a social life, but genuine emergencies with my clients or other peoples come up regularly. Or I will get very bad news and not be in a position to do something social and fun. I feel like I’m in an impossible position. People want to be my friend because of the work that I do, and I’m able to be present for my family because of the skills I have learned. But then, friends and family are sad and disappointed when I have to cancel. Sometimes it feels like people are guilting me, and I have worked through those feelings with my therapist. But I don’t know what to do for friends who just genuinely are upset when plans get cancelled and feel like their time isn’t valued. It makes me really sad. They will ask if there is a better way to make plans, but the answer is there really isn’t any. An emergency or a bad decision could happen at any time. And as I get more and more established in my field, and have more clients, I get more emergencies and more bad decisions. Is it that I can only be friends with people who genuinely don’t care about being cancelled on? —Sad Job Leads to Sad Friends Dear Sad Job Leads to Sad Friends, Oof, your work sounds so incredibly intense, and I’m sure it doesn’t help to feel guilty about letting your friends down on top of everything else. I also think it’s really commendable that you’re trying to maintain these close friendships that you have—I can hear in your letter how valuable they are to you, and how much anguish the situation is causing you. I don’t think the answer is to be friends only with people who genuinely don’t care about being cancelled on, because I don’t think people like that make very good friends. (Alas!) You could become friends with people who have similarly intense and unpredictable jobs—surgeons? Firefighters? Fellow death row criminal defense attorneys?—but of course, we run into the issue of none of these people actually having any time to make new friends, so we’re sort of back at square one. I know you say you mentor people in the field, but do you have a mentor? I’m wondering if you could talk to someone more senior in your field about how they’ve handled these situations. Do they delegate things to partners or more junior attorneys? How do they navigate the personal and the professional? You say you have a wonderful romantic partner, and I’m not sure whether or not you want kids, but if you do, these kinds of issues are going to only become more and more salient. In the meantime, I would continue to be transparent with your friends that you’re working on it, and do your best to honor the commitments that you make to them. If you ever take vacation or a personal day, perhaps you could make it a day where you hang out with friends—and keep the work phone on silent for the day. Please keep questions short (<150 words), and don’t submit the same question to multiple columns. We are unable to edit or remove questions after publication. Use pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. Your submission may be used in other Slate advice columns and may be edited for publication. Dear Good Job, Six years ago, my husband and his brother had to sue their father for unpaid wages. I only found out about how much they were owed and how long it had been since they had gotten a paycheck because my husband started railing on me about my spending, something he only ever did when a paycheck hadn’t been issued for a while. This wasn’t a new situation, but I found out they were both owed 24 weeks worth of pay! I helped my husband draft an email demanding payment in full. It was a very professional letter leaving out all emotions and stating only facts, giving his father a deadline to pay before we resorted to retaining legal services. He ignored the email, so we got a lawyer, and he represented both my husband and his brother. We wound up in mediation, and we did get a fair settlement, but obviously, suing one’s own father because he wouldn’t pay their wages caused a huge fracture. My husband and I are now 100 percent zero contact with his parents. Our children were teenagers at the time, and so they were old enough to understand what was happening and for us to encourage them to make their own decisions as to whether they wanted to maintain a relationship with their grandparents. We would never take that away from them. And we do speak to the rest of the family, just not his parents. Recently, we were at my husband’s older brother’s place for dinner with him and his wife. (There are three sons. The older brother never worked for their father). He is obviously knows what happened and the outcome, and he knows we haven’t spoken to either parent since. But he told us that their father’s 80th is coming up, and that he completely understands if we say no, but that he is extending the invitation. Nothing has been planned yet, just a heads up that an invitation will be coming. My husband was raised with a lot of guilt. Part of the financial and emotional abuse doled out by their father. (Let’s just say, there’s a certain world leader I have compared him to as being the Temu version of the Wish version of the SHEIN version of). I don’t want to attend the party at all. I don’t think we should. We haven’t spoken to them in six years. His mother didn’t acknowledge any of our recent milestones: We both turned 50 two years ago; we just celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary this year; and both kids graduated college and are working. My husband initially said we should go. That we should show up and say hello. I think that will be uncomfortable, will cause several uncomfortable conversations with their friends and relatives—conversations my husband has already had with former suppliers to the family business (My husband and his brother started a new business together.) I also feel attending will open him up to more of the abuse he grew up with, specifically the emotional manipulation. He doesn’t fully disagree, but I know the guilt he is feeling and that going against his father is still something he’s coming to terms with. Even during the suit and the mediation, my father-in-law made it clear he would have nothing to do with my husband. I reminded my husband of this. It’s in the mediation records. He hasn’t brought it up since, but I’m sure he’s discussed it with his brother. Should we go as an act of good faith? We don’t want a relationship with them. They’ve made that clear .Or should we avoid it, as I feel we should, since in six years, no one has offered even an olive pit, let alone a branch. —Finally Found Peace Dear Finally Found Peace, I can’t even imagine how painful it must have been for your husband to be so betrayed by his father, and it’s clear that the wounds are still raw. I’m saddened, also, that your father-in-law has made no effort to reconcile or apologize with his sons. And it’s clear that you’ve been incredibly supportive of your husband through all of this trauma—I’m glad he has you in his corner. But now I think it’s time for you to take a step back and let your husband decide for himself if he wants to go to his father’s 80th birthday party. Yes, his father did something almost unforgivable, but it’s still his dad, and perhaps your husband has his own reasons for potentially wanting to go—perhaps he’s thinking he’ll get some kind of closure from it, or feel more at peace with his decision to remain no-contact. Or perhaps he’s hoping that there will be a reconciliation that comes out of it. But it should be his decision to make. You can make your own call on whether you attend or not—if he wants you there for support, I personally would go, but if he feels OK going on his own, I think it’s fine to let him go. You can be there for him for the aftermath of whatever happens in the same way that you’ve been there for him all this time. His dad is turning 80—he may not have that many years left. If there’s a time for this potential reconciliation to happen, it seems like it’s now. I know that you’re still really angry about what happened, and I don’t think you should necessarily let that anger go—but I also think you need to follow your husband’s lead here and support him in whatever decision he ends up making. I hope that whatever he decides, he feels at peace with it. —Doree More Advice From Slate I’ve had the same cleaning lady, “Billie,” for a few years now. She’s always done a great job, and we’ve never had any problems before. Over the years a lot of my friends have also hired her, some on my recommendation. Then yesterday, my good friend “Karla” told me that some of her codeine pills went missing after Billie came to clean. Never miss new Slate Advice columns Get the latest from Prudie and our columnists in your inbox each weekday, plus special bonus letters on Saturdays. Advice Workplace Jobs Friendship