Unemployable. Undatable. Unbothered?

This post was three months in the making.

Why, you ask?

Because it’s about relationships and, quite frankly, I suck at them so, naturally all the “peri-menapausalundiagnosedADHDwhodoyouthinkyouareimpostersyndrom” blocker popped up.

Relationships is one of four key pillars Stack the Deck and the one I would be most willing to give up in my “yeah, I’m fine, I’ll do it myself” approach to most things.

In my head and on paper, the Stack the Deck relationship pillar makes perfect sense. “Relationships are the return on energy you share with others.”

If people drain you, get rid of them.

If they energize you, keep them around.

Simple, simple, ezpz.

In my lived experience, it’s an entirely different story. For me, with the “big ones”--the ones that matter--the ones everyone tells you not to screw up--I can’t seem to get right. And that is why, after three months of putting pen to paper and procrastinating with some more pantry reorganization, I’ve finally landed on this post.

I like to call it: Unemployable. Undatable. Unbothered?

Lets dig in:

Unemployable.

I can’t keep a job. Whether I'm the fastest to get promoted, I’m one of the bosses, or they’re paying me too much, there’s always something wrong and I quit. Here’s the run-down:

Job One: You're the best we've seen.

My first post law-school job was prestigious by Idaho standards. Relatively big, relatively respected law firm. It had three offices across the state and about 40 attorneys. At the time they hired me, it also had one other female associate and one female partner. 40 attorneys, three women.

Within four years, I was promoted to junior partner. I was told that it was the fastest anyone had ever done it. It did not come with a meaningful pay raise, so I started asking the guys questions. Turns out, they were making roughly 20k more. I asked one of the partners who decides these things why and the quick, unapologetic, shrug of the shoulders answer was, “They have families to support.”

Oh. Okay.

At the advice of another partner who told me “whatever you do, do NOT let them know you’re pregnant before the compensation committee meets,” I walked my five-months-pregnant-self back to my office and got back to work.

The next year, one week after she turned one, I quit.

Job Two: I'm the Boss

I was the sole breadwinner, so the stakes were high. Started my own firm and it did well. So well, I hired a paralegal, some associates, and eventually, got partners. Two men. We actually had a pretty good run. But as the firm grew to about 10 people a pattern became really clear.

A law firm is like a household. There is work that makes the money and there is work that raises the kids and holds the family together. Associates need to be trained and mentored. Systems need to be developed and refined. Emotions need to be managed. Cases that don’t make money still need to be nurtured so the lot of us don’t get sued for malpractice.

I was working my ass off at things that needed to be done but didn’t directly bring in the money. When the guys, my partners, my "equal" partners, were done with the money-making stuff, they’d go home to their families. I was the “firm mom” and when I was done with being the firm mom, I’d go pick my kids up from day-care and be their mom.

I got so tired that, eventually, I did the math. Calculated by the hour, I was making about .80 on the dollar, compared to my "equal" male partners. I ran the numbers, pulled the data, presented the charts, and proposed a new compensation structure.

Of course they agreed to it. They were enlightened and we were in it together.

And then, it shifted again. When the paid work was done they went home to their families. If the line between effort and money wasn’t short and straight, the guys simply wouldn’t do the work.

I told the more senior of my two partners that I was looking at other options.

He took it personally. “You can’t do this to me. I have kids to put through college.”

So did I and, apparently, at .80 on the dollar with my "equal" male partners.

Divorced with two kids and no safety net, I quit. Again.

Job Three: Oh the money is good!

I started rebuilding my own trial practice from scratch. And then COVID hit. As a trial lawyer, you cannot make money if there aren’t trials and during COVID, there weren’t any trials. In addition to there being no trials, I also had and extra duty: a second and fourth grader at home full time because schools were closed.

On January 6th (yes, THAT January 6th, watching THAT thing happen) I'm sitting in my home office and the phone rings. It's a call from the other female who worked with me at that fancy law firm years and years ago. It had been more than a decade since we'd talked. She was working in-house at a large company in Idaho and a position was opening.

The job would be different from any legal job I’d ever loved. I’m a people's lawyer. I sued businesses and governments. This would be working on the inside, for a very big business who worked for the government. I remember telling her, “Six months ago, I’d have said no; six months from now, I’d probably say no. But right now, the president is letting the capital get attacked so, I what do I have to lose?”

The money and the stability were phenomenal. For the first time in my life, I could take a deep breath and I was available for my kids on a regular, predictable schedule. We had a beautiful house and neighbors their age who saw the fence dividing our properties as another part of the neighborhood playground.

The catch was, working for a big company that worked for the government and paid big money meant I wasn't being paid for my voice.
I was paid for my willingness to be silent.

I couldn’t do it.

My boss recommended medication.

Suffocating in my silence, I quit.

Again.

UNDATABLE.

That last job unraveled at the same time my last long-term relationship unraveled. The details of that mess are far more embarrassing than they are interesting, so we’ll just leave it there.

But that undoing of that particular failed relationship conjured up a conversation I had with a dear friend from the Army who I reconnected with after my divorce. As we laughed about the past and caught up on more than a decade of “what have you been up to” he talked about his most recent breakup: She wasn’t particularly ambitious, always kind of helpless and needy, so he broke it off.

Then, ironically, he offered me this advice: “To be honest, Becky, you’re intimidating as fvck. That’s hard for guys; you have to dumb it down a bit.”

Shortly after that conversation I heard from him again. He said after spending time with me, he realized she was exactly what he needed in his life and they were back together. He also said that she was uncomfortable with him talking to me, so he wouldn’t reach out again and he hasn't. The grapevine reports they’re doing well.

I thought about that exchange regularly as my last job and my last relationship were unraveled simultaneously.
"Geezus, Becky, what is wrong with you?"
“You have to dumb it down a bit.”

The kind of stability I kept sacrificing myself for required just that.

Sacrificing.

Accept less, do more, stay silent, dumb it down.

And I cannot.

I began joking to anyone who would listen that I was “unemployable and undatable.”

That joke makes people uncomfortable.

Now, I mostly just tell it to myself.

UNBOTHERED?

I would LOVE to say that I’m unbothered by it all, but I’m not.

At least, not yet. But I'm working on it.

I have good, well meaning friends, who promise they’ve been through the same and swear that if I’d just get a prescription for something it will slow down the thoughts that race in my head. “You’ll feel better about all of it.”
I can’t bring myself to do it.

I look around at the world and consider taking advice and pills designed to make me be okay and I don’t want that.

I don’t want to be okay with how things are.

I don’t want my thoughts to be quiet.

I don’t want to be quiet.

I want to be one of the few who knows that things can be better.

I want to be one of the few who helps that few grow into the many.

I want to create communities where the many find each other, outside systems who are willing to pay for your silence, not your voice, and where we are not asked to “dumb it down.”

Relationships

In Stack the Deck, I challenge people to measure relationships by the return on energy we share with each other.

Take some time today to reflect on the big ones.

Are you sharing your energy with those who willingly share theirs in return?

Or are you being asked to take less, do more, stay silent, and dumb it down?

If it’s the latter, let’s talk.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

Rebecca Young | Speaker

rebecca@stackthedeck.net