A recent survey by matchmaking company Tawkify asked over 1,000 U.S. adults about how job loss affects their dating lives — from first dates to long-term relationships. Survey respondents shared multiple ways that unemployment can have a negative impact including cancelling dates for financial reasons and hesitating to even ask someone out at all.
And thirty-eight percent of those surveyed said the biggest effect unemployment has on their dating lives is that it causes them to be more emotionally closed off.
Justin Lehmiller, senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute for sex and relationship research and host of the “Sex and Psychology Podcast,” is not surprised that this many adults report shutting down emotionally during unemployment — in fact, he would expect the number to be even higher.
“When you think about the first question somebody asks you when they meet you,” says Lehmiller, “it’s often, ‘what do you do for a living?’”
In the U.S., “work is the single most important way of proving your worth” as a person, Steven Vallas, professor emeritus of sociology at Northeastern University, previously told CNBC. Beyond providing a livelihood, he noted, work is also the primary way individuals gain respect among their peers.
