Does work-life balance really exist?

Rabbi Landau answers bluntly: “Work life balance doesn’t exist. You can’t work a full hard day and then come home to a second full-time job called marriage. No wonder you fail at both.”

He tells of a man who complained to him that he was struggling at work and in his marriage. His answer was the Torah’s instruction, “Naki yihyeh l’veiso shanah echas”: a new husband should be free for his home for one full year. That is the time to work on the marriage. “After that, the marriage should start working for you.”

And if it isn’t working for you, he explains, that is “an indication, not a cause,” of why you are failing at home and at work. When a marriage is built right, “home is not where you lose energy. It’s where you get it back.” But “if your marriage feels like a second shift, you will fail at the first shift too.”

Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level

Surface claim

There is no balancing a full workday with a second full-time job called marriage.

Fear, vulnerability, or tension

A man struggling at both work and home feels he is failing everywhere. Rabbi Landau calls the struggling marriage an indication, not the cause.

Underlying need or longing

Home is meant to be the place where you get your energy back, not where you lose it.

Deepest human truth

The Torah gives a full year to build the marriage so that afterward it works for you. In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that a home built properly renews a person’s strength rather than using it up.

More questions from this teaching

• Why does the Torah give a newly married man a full year for his home?