Workaholism -- an addiction to work -- might sometimes be praised as industriousness, but can also be a real disorder that complicates people's lives.
HuffPost Live host Alyona Minkovski discussed the issue Monday with a panel including psychologists and one self-confessed former workaholic, Angus Nelson, the CMO of DaddyApproves.com and author of Love's Compass: How Do You Recover After a Lost Relationship.
Nelson said that his addiction to working at a nonprofit organization he had started ended up causing serious problems in his marriage.
"It turned from just going a good thing for the people of my community to trying to do something for myself," he said. "It starts to become a coping mechanism to where 60-70-80 hour work weeks are the norm. And I had just gotten married, and my wife and I had met at this nonprofit organization, and I thought, 'She should understand! She's been here with me. She's in the trenches, it's gonna be fantastic!' And I was utterly wrong."
Nelson said that a few months later he and his wife "started having conflicts" owing to his workaholism.
"'Why are you doing this? It's never going to work? It's not worth it,'" he recounted his wife's comments to him. "All the thing that only propelled me to work harder."