Lawyers and relationships: when work means battle and you can’t take the armour off at home

“Stop cross-examining me.”

Dinner, a Tuesday. She mentioned that she had forgotten to call the repair man. He asked why. Then he asked whether she had had time between eleven and twelve. Then whether she hadn’t said she would sort it out the week before. Every question was calm and logical. None of them was unkind. And yet after the third she put down her fork and said that sentence. He was genuinely surprised. He was only asking.

Many partners of people who work in professions where battle is an everyday thing could describe this scene — in law firms, in court, in negotiations where the person across the table does not wish you well. All day long you look for weak points in the other side’s arguments, anticipate what could go wrong and don’t show what you feel. These are the skills that make you good at your job. The problem is that in the evening they don’t come off along with the suit jacket.

In this piece I write about that armour: what it is, why it is so hard to put down, and what happens to a relationship when you keep wearing it at home. I write mainly about lawyers, because the research on them is the most revealing, but everything that follows also applies to other professions where work means constant confrontation.

A profession that teaches you to doubt

Legal education and practice develop a very particular way of thinking. You look for holes. You anticipate the worst outcome. You don’t take anything on trust. You check every claim, set every statement against another, notice every inconsistency. The client pays you for exactly this: to think of what they didn’t.

Martin Seligman, one of the founders of positive psychology, wrote an article with two colleagues in 2001 under the telling title Why Lawyers Are Unhappy. One of their arguments was that a pessimistic explanatory style — expecting things to go wrong and thinking about why — is an advantage in law. A lawyer who foresees every trap protects the client better. But the same stance, carried over into private life, wears a person down and steals their joy. It is hard to be a professional sceptic and, at the same time, someone who relaxes and trusts at home.

Susan Daicoff, a lawyer and psychologist, gathered research on the personality traits of lawyers in her book Lawyer, Know Thyself. She described how people who prioritise logic over emotion, rights over relationships and competition over cooperation are more common among them. The profession attracts them, and the profession reinforces these traits further. This is not a condemnation — these are skills without which the legal system would not function. The only question is what happens to them when they come home.

What the numbers show

In 2016 Patrick Krill and two colleagues published a study of almost 13,000 lawyers in the United States. Around 28 per cent reported symptoms of depression, and many also reported anxiety, stress and hazardous drinking. I don’t know of comparable data for Slovenia, and I wouldn’t simply transfer American figures, since legal culture and working conditions differ. But the picture matches what research in other countries describes: a profession that demands constant vigilance and emotional control from people comes at a price.

I write about how quiet self-medication creeps into demanding professions in Alcohol and stimulants in demanding professions: quiet self-medication. Here I want to stay with something else: what happens between two people when one of them works on a battlefield.

The armour: what it is and why you can’t put it down

Armour is a good metaphor because it isn’t bad. It protects you. In the courtroom or at the negotiating table you need it. The trouble is not that you have it, but that you don’t know how to take it off — or no longer notice you are wearing it.

A nervous system that is on alert all day doesn’t switch over automatically when you unlock your front door. It stays watchful for danger, searching for what might go wrong. In the knowledge base we call this state hypervigilance. At home it shows up as impatience, as a need for everything to have a clear answer, as an inability simply to listen without immediately judging.

In a well-known 1989 study, the psychologist Rena Repetti followed air traffic controllers and their families. After days with a heavy workload, the controllers were more withdrawn at home and less emotionally involved. Researchers call this spillover: the state you are in at work spills over into home. Partners often know both forms — the person who comes home still completely “in the case”, and the person who comes home and isn’t there, even though they are sitting at the table.

When your partner feels like the opposing side

The psychologist John Gottman spent decades observing couples and described four patterns that predict trouble in a relationship: criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling. I wrote about them in The Four Horsemen in relationships: Gottman’s predictors of a breakup. For people who spend all day in confrontation, two of these patterns are particularly close to home.

The first is defensiveness. Someone who is used to having to defend every claim will hear a partner’s remark as an accusation that must be answered with arguments. “You’re late again” doesn’t get the reply “sorry, I know that was unpleasant for you”, but a precise account of why the delay wasn’t their fault. The argument may even be correct. But the partner didn’t want a ruling. They wanted to be heard.

The second is stonewalling. When a conversation becomes emotional, a person who is used to controlling their emotions retreats into a cool calm. On the outside they seem composed; inside they are often overwhelmed. Gottman described how in such moments the body responds as if to danger — and that listening is then no longer possible.

This is how a conversation might sound in a couple where one partner spends the day in battle (composite, not a real person):

“I had a really hard time today because of Mum.”
“What exactly did she say?”
“It doesn’t matter what she said. I felt awful.”
“But if I don’t know what she said, I can’t judge whether she was right.”
“I don’t want you to judge. I want you to be with me.”
“… I don’t know how to do that without the facts.”

The last line is half a joke and half the truth. Someone whose profession has taught them to gather the facts first genuinely doesn’t know what to do with a feeling they can’t resolve. Not because they don’t care. But because they have forgotten — or never learned — that being there is already enough.

Empathy that switches off

A lawyer has to understand the client in order to represent them well. But at the same time they have to keep a distance from the client’s story so as to stay clear-headed. And the other side often has to be seen as an obstacle, not as a person with their own pain. This is a demanding balance. When there is too much of it, empathy starts to switch off — first towards the other side, then towards clients, and in the end often at home too.

Christina Maslach, who has researched burnout for more than four decades, described its three dimensions: exhaustion, cynicism or depersonalisation, and a sense of ineffectiveness. Cynicism is often a form of protection: if you don’t care, it can’t hurt. I wrote about this in more detail in Cynicism as a sign: when you no longer care and it isn’t your character. You will find a short explanation of empathy in the knowledge base.

At home, cynicism shows up as the look with which someone listens to their partner’s distress as if listening to a client who is exaggerating. Or as the sentence “that’s not a real problem”. But a partner doesn’t need their distress to be objectively big. They need it to matter to someone.

What the children see

Children learn about relationships mainly by watching. If they see at home that a conversation ends when one parent wins the argument, they learn that conversation is a contest. If they see that feelings are not shown, they learn that feelings must be hidden. None of this is fatal and none of it is intentional. But it is worth noticing what your armour also communicates to those who look at it from below.

At the same time, children of parents in these professions can also receive a great deal of good: a sense of fairness, the ability to think clearly, the courage to stand up for themselves. The question is not whether a parent should hide their skills, but whether they can also show the other side — that they make mistakes, that they admit they don’t know, that they are sad.

Exercise: from the courtroom to the front door

The researcher Sabine Sonnentag and colleagues have shown that psychological detachment — really not being at work in your mind during your free time — is key to recovering from work. For people in demanding professions, this doesn’t happen on its own. It needs a transition. This exercise takes less than twenty minutes and you can start it today.

1. Close the day on paper. Before you leave the office, write down three open matters and the first step for tomorrow. The brain lets go more easily of what has been written down.
2. Make a physical transition. Ten minutes of walking, a few slow breaths out in the car, or music you don’t associate with work. Give your body the signal that the fight is over.
3. Before the door, ask yourself: “What state am I in?” If you are still deep in the case, say so: “I’m not quite home yet, give me ten minutes.” That is better than pretending.
4. Let your first words at home be a question, not a report. “How was your day?” — and then listen without judging for at least two minutes.
5. Notice the armour. When you catch yourself cross-examining, defending or looking for a flaw in your partner’s story, stop and say: “I’m back in the courtroom.” Just naming it loosens it.

Where this doesn’t apply

It would be unfair to say that every lawyer wears armour at home. Many know how to switch, many are warm and playful at home, and many partners value precisely the fact that they have someone beside them who thinks clearly and knows how to stand up for them. Confrontation skills are not bad in a relationship: the ability to say what bothers you and not to back away from conflict can be a great asset for a couple.

Nor does the armour necessarily come from the profession. Often a person was wearing it long before — from a family in which it was dangerous to show vulnerability, or in which they had to become strong early. The profession merely chose them and reinforced it. In that case, changing work habits won’t be enough, because the armour is older than the career. What helps here is a look at your own story: where you learned that feeling is dangerous.

And one more important limit. If “cross-examination” in a relationship turns into control, intimidation, humiliation or threats, it is no longer professional armour but abuse. Then the answer is not better communication. In Slovenia you can find help on the SOS helpline for women and children victims of violence, 080 11 55, and in an emergency call the police on 113 or 112. And if you notice signs of depression in yourself or your partner, more and more alcohol, or thoughts that nothing makes sense any more, turn to a doctor or call the crisis line Klic v duševni stiski, 01 520 99 00 in Slovenia (7 pm–7 am) or the Samaritan helpline, 116 123 (24 hours).

What helps a couple

The first thing is for the armour to become visible. As long as one partner thinks “I’m only asking” and the other “he’s interrogating me again”, they talk past each other. When both can say “you’re in the courtroom now”, without blame, space opens up.

The second is an agreement about when there is room for solving and when for listening. A simple question helps: “Do you want me to help you solve it, or do you want me to listen?” For someone whose profession has taught them to solve things, this can be a relief — at last they know what is expected of them.

The third is boundaries between work and home: when messages get answered, whether cases are discussed over dinner, which evenings belong only to the two of you. I write about why boundaries often feel selfish in Setting boundaries: why it feels selfish even though healthy relationships depend on it.

The fourth is for both of you to ask what the armour is actually guarding. In relational family therapy, in which I am training under supervision, this is exactly what interests us: what lies beneath the hardness. Often there is a fear of being helpless, of not being enough, of someone seeing them as weak. When a partner sees this, anger can turn into compassion. And when a person feels that their partner sees them without the armour too, it becomes easier to set it down. This is what we call differentiation: how to stay yourself and stay in the relationship — remaining who you are even when you are not in battle.

If you notice that work is taking more from you than you are willing to give, also check the signs I write about in Burnout is not laziness: signs your nervous system is asking for a break. Armour you can no longer put down is sometimes the first sign that the body has been on alert for too long.

I also work with English-speaking clients, in person in Ljubljana, if you would like to look at this together.

What to remember

• The armour — doubt, emotional control, searching for weak spots — is useful in professions of confrontation. The trouble starts when you can’t take it off.
• Your state at work spills over into home: as tension, cross-examination or withdrawal.
• Your partner doesn’t need a ruling but presence. The question “solve or listen?” often settles more than any argument.
• Switching off after work doesn’t happen by itself: it needs a transition — writing things down, the body, the first question at home.
• The armour is often older than the career. When a relationship turns into control or abuse, it is no longer about armour — seek help.