All the way back in 2022, the season finale cliffhanger of the workplace drama Severance left me screaming:

OMFG THIS IS THE MOST MIND-BENDING STUFF I’VE EVER WITNESSED GIVE ME MORE RIGHT NOW PLEEEEEEASE!!!

Then, along with millions of other fans, I waited an agonizing 1,015 days for the premier of season two last Friday. 🤦

During that grueling wait, some weird thoughts crept into my mind…

Severance’s outlandishly dystopian premise is actually pretty damn close to how many people live their lives. Most of us have two selves:

1. Our work self

2. And our home self

So if that’s true, how much do the people in our personal lives really understand about our “work self”? And how much does it matter?

Let’s dive into that.

And don’t worry — you don’t have to be familiar with Severance (although you should definitely go watch it right f*cking now), nor will I give away any spoilers. 😉

Everyone has two sides

The premise of Severance is that an innovative (albeit cultish) company performs a neurological procedure on their willing employees that divides their memories between their work lives, and their personal lives.

So when they arrive to the office, their work self is “switched on”, and they have no memory of their personal life — and vice versa.

Their two selves are “severed”.

The show does a stellar job of examining all the moral and philosophical perplexities one might expect to arise from such an arrangement, injecting drama at every turn.

It is absolutely riveting science fiction.

But it’s not at all like real life — right?

Ehhh…

I bet that while most of us would admit that we have personality aspects which rarely co-mingle between work and home, our two selves may be far more “severed” than we realize.

Just ask your family. 🤷

I dated before Tinder. Thank god.

Many years ago, I was preparing to go on a first date with my now husband, Brennan.

We had met a few weeks prior on Match(.com), the predecessor to apps like Tinder and Bumble. Match boasted detailed user profiles, relied on email communication, and featured –gasp– no “swiping” whatsoever.

I know. Stone Age stuff. 🙄 

In fact, back then, it could be embarrassing to even admit that you had an online dating profile. It was viewed as a medium for people who couldn’t get dates the old-fashioned way.

But I was drawn to it for a pretty specific reason—

👉 Efficiency.

As fun as the NYC dating scene could be, I wasn’t interested in playing the field. I had already been married and divorced, and I understood the qualities I was seeking in a life partner.

Not to sound too insufferable (although I kinda was), I needed the men I agreed to date to meet some requirements.

In my mind, there was nothing worse than meeting someone spontaneously, experiencing amazing chemistry, falling in love, then slowly discovering that our core values weren’t aligned.

I had experienced enough heartbreak. 

I was ready to be sensible.

And the super detailed Match user profiles provided me with the information I needed to make that determination before I even agreed to a single date.

.

.

.

But then there was Brennan.

#YOLO

Brennan didn’t have a job.

Well, according to his Match profile, he didn’t have a job.

But according to the emails he sent me, he did have a job — he just didn’t like to talk about it.

That was a critical red flag for me.

I was hugely career-driven, and didn’t think it would be a good idea to date someone who didn’t even want to talk about his job.

So Brennan clarified that it wasn’t that he didn’t want to talk about his job — he just didn’t feel comfortable doing it until he met me in person.

I was still exceptionally wary, but he was cute, and way more charming than the other guys I had exchanged emails with.

So I reluctantly agreed to go on a date.

But in a manner that makes me cringe to this day, I showed up to that date, sat down, and immediately blurted out:

“Ok. You’ve met me in person. Now tell me what you do for a living.”

Ugh.  🤦

But without skipping a beat, Brennan uttered a sentence that revealed:

1. He was employed by an elite government agency

2. He was carrying a firearm

I figured he must be joking. But the gun was very real. 😳

So I thought to myself:

“Screw it. He’s either telling the truth, and is officially the most interesting person I’ve ever met — or I’m getting murdered tonight.”

#YOLO

We work together. We play together. Doesn’t everyone?

Until Brennan and I began dating, my work life and personal life were tangled up more tightly than a string of rogue Christmas lights.

👉 My parents met at work, then owned several businesses together, the last of which I was on the payroll for.

👉 Then I met my ex-husband at work, and we launched a successful business together.

See a pattern?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, my ex and I were far better colleagues than spouses. 🤷

We respected each other’s talents enormously, and worked together on hugely stressful projects with a give-and-take that rivaled an Abbott and Costello routine. 

(Too bad we couldn’t keep up the rat-tat-tat at home.)

Up until that time, my whole world revolved around family businesses, and my psychology was primed for the openness that is required for family businesses to actually work in practice.

So the idea that my new boyfriend’s professional life was almost completely “severed” from his personal life was…

Honestly, pretty damn unnerving. 

I knew about his basic duties. He shared a little bit about office politics, and some playful stories about his interactions with celebrities and world leaders.

I had just enough information to paint a broad-strokes picture of his work life in my mind.

But it wasn’t the mystery of the top-secret details he (obviously) couldn’t share that left me unsettled…

👉 It was the fact that I had no clue whether or not he was actually good at his job.

I had no idea if his bosses liked him… 

If his colleagues respected him… 

If he was fair with his subordinates…

How could I possibly decide to commit to this man if I didn’t know these things?

Every important person in my life up until then was deeply entwined in my professional life — and I in theirs. We couldn’t hide. If we behaved poorly at work, the other person knew it.

Looking back all these years later, the discomfort I was experiencing wasn’t really related to Brennan’s “confidential” duties.

I probably would have felt this way with any new partner who had a work life that I wasn’t involved in.

For the first time ever, I was experiencing an intimate relationship the way most people do — with someone I don’t work with.

So… how did I cope?

You already know the end of this story. Brennan and I have been happily married for over a decade. So clearly, we figured it out.

The first unlock occurred a few months after we got serious, when I finally met one of Brennan’s colleagues. It was his D.C. counterpart — a pretty senior guy who had been with the agency a long time.

We met up for drinks, and when Brennan went to the bathroom, he leaned over with a genuine smile and said:

“I hope you’re in it for the long haul. Brennan is one of the most talented agents I’ve ever worked with.”

He had no idea how much comfort that single comment brought me.

That very same night, Brennan and I discussed the possibility of marriage for the first time ever. 

Finally knowing that he was talented and well-liked at work must have opened my heart up. ❤️

👉 I had met his “severed” half.

Introduce your family to your “severed” half

In the years that followed, I came to learn more about Brennan’s behavior at work. His competence, his thoughtfulness, and his drive, all came to light in casual conversations I was able to have with his workmates.

And he was able to learn about my “severed” half in much the same way — through interactions with people in my work life.

He even reads Drunk Business Advice! (Well, most weeks.)

And the same applies to the rest of my family.

My parents can’t explain what I actually do for a living, but that’s ok, because they love when I share what my colleagues and customers say about me.

❌ They don’t care about the tasks I perform every day.

✅ They care that I’m helping people.

So rather than opening up to your loved ones about your job responsibilities, give them a peek into your job relationships instead.

Unless you happen to be the office lunch-stealer, or the guy who writes “as per” in emails.

Hide that shit from your family. 

They don’t want to know what your coworkers think about you. 😬

Cheers! 🍻

-Kristin :-)

P.S. — Many thanks to Tenor.com for all the Severance GIFs!

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