The Guardian Weekly 14 January 2022
60 Lifestyle
STEPHEN COLLINS
My son is 30 and a lawyer. He is
ambitious and enthusiastic, but
he’s now in his fourth job , and
already wants to leave after just
a few months.
When he starts a new job, he
is generally happy, but within
a short time he realises there’s
a gap between the job description
and the reality, and wants to get
out because he feels he’s wasting
his time. He says the problems he
encounters are poor management
and bad organisation.
Although I think each time
he has good reasons to resign,
I try to suggest that there might
be something in him – his
expectations, his choices – that
could explain that “pattern”.
In his current job, he resents
his young superior’s constant
rewriting of his contracts, mostly
for minor grammatical details. He
acknowledges that she is neither
harassing him nor ill-intentioned.
His older sister (also a lawyer)
sees nothing wrong in his boss’s
behaviour. She says he should not
ASK
Annalisa Barbieri
How do I get my
quitter son to
realise that no
job is perfect?
take it so personally: it’s their job
to supervise him, and he still has
a lot to learn. My son dismisses
her help and thinks that she’s
too “submissive”.
I told him recently that he can’t
have it all ; that it could never be
perfect, just like in a relationsh ip.I
would very much have liked to
know what your son was like
as a young boy. Could he take
criticism? How was he with
authority? He seems to struggle
with seeing others’ point of view,
or thinking he’s never wrong. Was
he l i ke t h is at sc hool or ha s t h is on ly
come up si nce he sta r ted work?
My spec ia l ist t h is week,
psychotherapist Chris Mills,
thought you sounded really
sensible. You could see that there
was a problem but realised that
t h is may be dow n to you r son’s
attitude. “In a way,” said Mills,
“your son’s fi ghting off admitting he
has a problem, so he’s making the
problem literally anybody else’s.”
What might this problem be? It
could be that your son has always
done very well academically but
that, in applying that to a practical
environment, he’s coming a bit
unstuck. “For all that your son does
brilliantly, he can’t seem to grasp
that he can’t relate well to other
people; if he could just admit that,
it would transform his relationships
and his working life would be more
bearable.” The people around him
seem to see this, yet he doesn’t.
“He reminds me of studentsI used to work w it h who never
failed at anything and it made
them incredibly fragile,” said Mills.
“Failure, which is entirely ordinary,
becomes terrifying to those who
aren’t used to it. Sometimes people
who are super intelligent fi nd it
incredibly diffi cult to adjust to
the ordinariness of the everyday,
which is full of people getting
things wrong and disagreeing with
you.” Mills further pointed out that
success in everyday life is “being
able to deal with that failure and not
expecting life to be tidy or linear”.
We also thought it was
interesting that he comes to talk
to you. Mills thought it seemed
slightly immature – that your
son felt that only his mum really
understood him.
So what to do? Not much, really.
Your son is an adult and he’s going
to have to navigate this. I think
you’re doing all the right things
in bringing a bit of ordinariness
to his complaints, and asking him
to look at his own role in things.
I know people like this : they leave
job after job (or relationship, an
interesting parallel you made
there), never looking at the common
denominator in all of it: themselves.
We learn by our failures and they
help us develop. Acknowledging our
failures is a strength, but only if we
can see them as our failures, and not
attribute them to others.
If you would like advice on a family
matter, email ask.annalisa@
theguardian.com. See gu.com/letters-
terms for terms and conditionsHe can’t
seem to
grasp thathe can’t
relatewell to
other
people