Lawyers carry extraordinary responsibilities into the courtroom, the boardroom, and – often without intending to – their living rooms. The profession’s demands shape how attorneys think, communicate, and cope with stress. Yet the strengths that make for successful lawyering often become liabilities in intimate relationships, in which partners need openness, collaboration, and emotional presence more than argumentation or analytical precision. Love is not a combat sport, an intellectual exercise, or something nurtured by the drive to win or be right.
Decades of research show a consistent pattern: lawyers experience elevated rates of marital strain and divorce. While estimates vary, studies place the divorce rate for attorneys between 24% and 30% – with women in private practice reporting some of the highest levels of relational dissatisfaction. These numbers don’t reflect a lack of commitment or of a desire to have a happy home life; they reflect the collision between the culture of law and the culture of intimate partnership.
Understanding why lawyers struggle in intimate relationships – and how they can strengthen those bonds – requires looking at the profession through a social-science lens.
The Lawyer Personality: A Double-Edged Sword
Legal scholar Susan Daicoff’s research on lawyer personality shows that lawyers score significantly higher than the general population on skepticism, autonomy, competitiveness, urgency, and pessimism. She describes lawyers as competitive, perfectionistic, driven, and materialistic.[1] These traits can serve legal practice and career growth, but at home, they can create relational friction.[2]
Amber Ault, Ph.D., MSW, offers consultation, coaching, and training to legal professionals and the mental health providers who support them. Find her at counselortocounselor.org.
A partner subjected to regular argumentation, deposition, or cross-examination may feel interrogated rather than understood, supported, and encouraged. A lawyer who values independence over collaboration may struggle with the interdependence that healthy relationships require. Female lawyers who marry partners with expectations that align more closely with the sexism-based roles of earlier generations may struggle to balance work and may feel constrained by conventional expectations or by imbalanced distributions of domestic labor. In all cases, communication styles that focus more on facts and debate work against lawyers in love. Stress and unhappiness can take a toll, and some lawyers turn to alcohol and other distractions, further complicating the dynamics.
The Mental Health Landscape: How Lawyer Well-Being Shapes Relationships
Beyond the general stress of work and relationships, it’s important to review the broader fallout of life in the legal profession. The 2019 American Bar Association/Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation Study on Lawyer Impairment[3] revealed the most comprehensive picture to date of lawyer mental health:
28% of lawyers experience depression.
19% experience anxiety.
23% report chronic stress.
21% are “problem drinkers.”
These rates far exceed those of the general population.
Across professions, chronic stress and emotional depletion affect relational functioning in predictable ways: reduced emotional availability, irritability, difficulty transitioning out of “work mode,” and withdrawal. Partners may feel they are “competing with the job” or “living with someone who is always half-present.”
Secondary Trauma. Lawyers working with trauma-heavy caseloads – such as criminal, family, juvenile, domestic violence, and sexual assault – face additional relational burdens. Research on secondary traumatic stress shows that repeated exposure to other people’s trauma can lead to emotional numbing, hypervigilance, and difficulty trusting – symptoms that also spill over into home life.
Emotional Labor: The Hidden Load in Lawyer Households. Sociologist Arlie Hochschild’s groundbreaking work on emotional labor – the effort required to manage one’s own emotions and those of others – offers a powerful lens for understanding relational strain in lawyer marriages and other intimate relationships.[4]
Hochschild distinguishes between:
Paid emotional labor (performed in the workplace), and
Unpaid emotional labor (performed at home, often invisibly).
In many lawyer households, the attorney’s partner – especially when female – carries the bulk of the unpaid emotional labor: managing household logistics, smoothing family tensions, tracking social obligations, and maintaining the emotional climate of the home.
Hochschild’s research shows that when emotional labor is unevenly distributed, the following can occur:
For lawyers, the imbalance is often intensified by the profession’s demands. When attorneys come home depleted, their partners may shoulder even more emotional labor, creating what Hochschild calls a “second shift” – a full round of emotional and domestic work after the paid workday ends.[5] The situation becomes even more challenging when both partners are lawyers or when the lawyer in the couple is a woman and is also expected to manage the household.
Strengthening Lawyers’ Personal Relationships: Research-Backed Strategies
Despite these challenges, lawyers can build deeply satisfying relationships – and they should. Supportive family life can serve as a buffer against life’s hardships and make its successes sweeter and more meaningful. Creating satisfying relationships requires intentionality and a willingness to shift out of professional habits that undermine intimacy.
Fortunately, lawyers usually have qualities that make them great partners, including the ability to learn new communication strategies and to apply their considerable analytical training to the complexities of a troubled relationship.
Research psychologist John Gottman studies couples, both those who are thriving and those in distress. He and his spouse, psychotherapist Julie Gottman, sort couples’ dynamics into those who are “masters” and those who are “disasters” and offer the assurance that almost everyone can acquire the insights and skills most typical of relationship masters.[6] In my private practice, I have seen couples and individuals make powerful changes in their conduct as a result of learning the skills that social science research has shown to support relationship satisfaction. Here’s a brief introduction to these insights.
Responsiveness Matters. When partners make “bids for connection,” whether by text or with a lifted eyebrow across a crowded room, they want to know their attempts at contact are received, welcomed, and considered. Happy couples report that their partners register and respond to 90% or more of the bids they make. Couples in distress start missing those bids when they allow themselves to be distracted by work, choose to ignore a spouse’s texts because they feel overwhelmed, or feign deafness when a partner says that it’s time to leave the house. When partners have drifted in that direction, aiming for a 90% response rate can be a small investment with a large return.
Make More Deposits Than Withdrawals. Negative interactions hit harder and resonate longer than positive ones. Lawyers are trained to find flaws, loopholes, and logical errors – that is, to look for weaknesses in an opponent’s arguments. These skills might serve a function in a relationship, as when a couple is evaluating a contract for a large purchase, but they are deeply destructive when weaponized against a partner. One negative interaction can destroy an accumulation of goodwill, so lawyers in love are well advised to create positive experiences with their partners; think of these as deposits in a shared emotional bank account, and remember that every negative interaction is worth at least five withdrawals.
End Criticism and Defensiveness. Critical thinking is central to the work of lawyering, but criticizing intimate others destroys goodwill, trust, and fun. Criticism also usually predicts defensiveness, and couples in this pattern often end up positioned like opposing counsel in hostile litigation. The solution? The Gottman approach teaches people to notice when they are becoming critical, pause before expressing it, consider the need that their criticism is covering, and express that need.[7] For example, “I need to leave the Labor Day party early to prepare for court – could you help me figure out how to do that?” lands differently than, “You always make us stay too long at the Labor Day picnic.” On the other side of the equation, resisting the urge to respond defensively pays off, as does noting what is true about a critical comment. For example, “You’re right; I do usually want to stay at the party later than you do” brings the partners into an early agreement and establishes a foundation for moving forward so they can leave at different times or earlier – together.
Understand the Economy of Gratitude. Sociologist Arlie Hochschild, an expert in the sociology of emotions, notes the importance of a “marital economy of gratitude.”[8] Just as we all like to hear “you’re right,” most of us want to know that our labor is seen and appreciated. Couples who frequently express gratitude report higher levels of relationship satisfaction.
The marital economy of gratitude can become imbalanced when highly salient tasks, such as mowing the lawn, receive greater recognition than daily tasks, such as washing dishes or setting the table. Lawyers can improve marital happiness by relinquishing expectations that each partner has domestic labor obligations that don’t need to be recognized. Some couples cultivate a daily practice to counteract “gratitude drift,” in which, at the end of the day, each partner shares what they appreciate about the other person, what they regret about their own conduct, and what they would like to request going forward.
Build a Buffer Between Work and Home. Healthy relationships require protected time and emotional presence. Many lawyers have a tough time downregulating at the end of demanding days or finding the emotional energy to meet a partner or children with presence and positivity. Building buffer zones between work and home, or between work time and family time, can help lawyers focus on the quality of their relationships, see their partners through a lens of curiosity and appreciation, and make a real effort to create positive interactions. These buffer zones can be “third spaces” that are physical, such as a drive or ride home; behavioral, such as taking the dog for a walk before settling into the evening; or emotional, such as listening to a positive playlist or podcast, taking a few minutes to do some deep breathing, or designing a “closing practice” before leaving the office.
Be “Open to Influence.” In the context of relationships, being “open to influence” is far more desirable than in the world of politics. When we commit to someone, we essentially agree to be open to their influence for the rest of our lives. When a person signals that they are worried about their partner’s drinking, anger, or tendency to overwork, it is important for the spouse to listen. When partners resist their spouse’s influence, they do so at their own peril and put their relationships in jeopardy. Lawyers are famous for staking out and vigorously defending their positions, but that superpower can work against them in intimate relationships. At home, it’s important for lawyers to signal that they take seriously their partner’s input on conduct, shared life choices, and where to go for vacation.
Conclusion: A Path Toward Connection
Lawyers are not destined to struggle in committed relationships or marriage. Yet the profession’s culture, demands, and psychological conditioning create real obstacles that require deliberate counterbalancing. By integrating the insights discussed in this article, attorneys can build relationships that are not only stable but also deeply fulfilling.
The skills that make lawyers exceptional advocates can also make them exceptional partners – once they learn to bring home curiosity, compassion, and connection.
Endnotes
[1] Susan S. Daicoff, Asking Leopards to Change Their Spots: Can Lawyers Change? A Critique of Solutions to Professionalism by Reference to Empirically-Derived Attorney Attributes, Geo. J. Legal Ethics 11: 547 (1998), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2442341. ^
[2] Amber A. Ault, Asking Leopards to Change Their Spots: Can Lawyers Change? Should They?, 97 Wis. Law. 35 (Oct. 2024), https://www.wisbar.org/NewsPublications/WisconsinLawyer/Pages/Article.aspx?Volume=97&Issue=9&ArticleID=30673. ^
[3] Patrick R. Krill, Ryan Johnson & Linda Albert, The Prevalence of Substance Use and Other Mental Health Concerns Among American Attorneys, J. Addiction Med. 10(1): 46-52 (Jan.-Feb. 2016), https://journals.lww.com/journaladdictionmedicine/fulltext/2016/02000/the_prevalence_of_substance_use_and_other_mental.8.aspx. ^
[4] Arlie R. Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (Univ. of Cal. Press 3d ed. 2012). ^
[5] Arlie R. Hochschild & Anne Machung, The Second Shift (Penguin Books rev. ed. 2003). ^
[6] John M. Gottman & Julie S. Gottman, 10 Principles for Doing Effective Couples Therapy (W.W. Norton & Co. 2015). ^
[7] John M. Gottman & Nan Silver, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country’s Foremost Relationship Expert (Harmony Books, 2d ed. 2015). ^
[8] Arlie R. Hochschild, The Commercialization of Intimate Life: Notes from Home and Work 104-18 (Univ. of Cal. Press 2003). ^
» Cite this article: 99 Wis. Law. 37-39 (July/August 2026).
