Money never loves you back: Subjective meaningmaking of life, love, and work

This research originates from observations in the therapeutic practice with subjects on career tracks and their suffering from the consequences when work and private life are put against each other under neoliberal conditions of life. 15 narrative stories are analyzed using the method of crystallization to reconstruct subjective reasoning and meaningmaking behind seemingly absurd actions, like purposefully missing the birth of the own children in favor of everyday work incidents. The findings reveal striking interrelations of the subjects' meaning of and relationship with work, including significant effects on relationship formations in friendship, romance, family, and marriage, where neoliberal shaping of the career trajectories become threats to community and humanism; Firstly, such threats are constituted on a pragmatic level, where work becomes the technical core of life through focus, time, dedication, and overall personal investment. Secondly, on an emotional and affective level, the emphasis on work and the career becomes a threat to the private and the social self, where loyalty, identification, and (romantic) love are projected into the relationship with work and the workplace. The findings are discussed against a critical theoretical background of Erich Fromm and aim to move beyond the stereotypical division of society in supposed perpetrator-victim causalities, usually blaming managers for their actions, to instead elaborate understandings of (all) subjects’ reasonable mode of being in restrictive contexts. Finally, we aim to formulate questions about possible measures and practices toward a humanist order of life, love, work, and society.