Why does leaving a job feel like leaving your people?
Your team knows your coffee order, and the group chat has jokes nobody else would get. For a lot of us, work has become the main place we feel like we belong, and that makes a draining job a whole lot harder to leave.
In this episode, I’m talking about the need to belong, what the Surgeon General’s 2023 loneliness advisory says about how much connection has shrunk outside of work, why managers hand more unpaid work to the employees they see as loyal, and why layoffs hit so hard when your people and your paycheck live in the same place.
You’ll also get a simple belonging map to see how much of your belonging runs through your job, plus one small experiment to start building some that doesn’t need a login.
If you decide to stay, stay because the work and the place still fit.
Would your work friendships survive you leaving?
You’ve probably done the math on leaving a dozen times. The salary and the insurance, and how long you could float between jobs.
What doesn’t make it onto the spreadsheet is the people.
The coworker who knows exactly what your face means in a meeting. The team that’s been through two reorgs with you. When you picture leaving, a lot of what you’re picturing is losing them.
This week’s episode is about why that happens. A lot of us get most of our belonging from work now, and the research on that is a little sobering. A 2025 report from Cigna found that 57% of U.S. adults are lonely, and 52% of workers are too. And the 2025 American Time Use Survey found that only 30% of us socialize with anyone on an average day, down from 38% in 2015. Work is one of the few places where connection still shows up on a schedule.
So I want to use this post for the practical side. If work is holding a lot of your belonging, how do you figure out which relationships are real, and how do you make a career decision without letting the group make it for you?
Make a belonging map before you make the decision
Grab a piece of paper. Write down the people who would notice you were gone if you went quiet for a week. The ones who would text to check on you, not the ones who’d notice a deadline slipped.
Then put a star next to every name you only know because of work.
Count the stars.
If most of the names have one, that’s data. Your job is carrying a big share of your belonging, which means any decision about the job is also a decision about your people. Of course it feels heavy.
This is also a pretty normal place to end up. In a 2023 Pew survey, about four in ten U.S. workers said their job is extremely or very important to their overall identity, and 53% of workers with a postgraduate degree said the same. When the work is who you are and where your people are, it’s a lot to move at once.
Sort the proximity from the friendship
Now go back to the starred names and ask one question about each: would this relationship survive me leaving?
Some will. You’ll know because the relationship already exists outside the job a little bit. You text about things that aren’t work, and you’ve talked about what you’d each do if you left.
Some won’t, and that’s fine. A lot of work relationships are proximity. Two people stuck in the same meeting long enough to become allies. That’s a real connection, and it’s also one that runs on the shared calendar.
Knowing which is which helps in two ways. You stop counting proximity relationships as a reason to stay. And you can start investing in the real ones now, while you still see each other every day.
Watch for loyalty that only runs one direction
Here’s the part that makes belonging at work tricky.
A 2023 study by researchers at Duke, Arizona State and West Virginia University looked at about 1,400 managers. Managers were more willing to give unpaid extra work to an employee described as loyal. When workers accepted that extra work, managers rated them as even more loyal. One of the researchers called it a vicious cycle.
So if you’re the one who covers, answers on vacation and takes the extra project because the team needs you, look at what comes back to you. Does the extra work ever show up in your review, or in a lighter load somewhere else? When you need flexibility, watch whether you get it.
If the loyalty only runs one direction, that’s a company using your belonging. You can still love the people on your team and see that clearly.
This is also why “we’re a family here” sets off alarms for me. A family is something you can’t really leave. When a company borrows the word, it borrows the pressure that comes with it. And when budgets get cut, companies treat us like line items. Every job should be treated like a rental, not a mortgage.
Build one place to belong that doesn’t need a login
You don’t need to rebuild your whole social life while you’re burned out. Pick one thing that repeats on its own, so you don’t have to organize it every week. A class or a volunteer shift, or a standing dinner with one friend. Somewhere people know you as you, and nobody asks what you do for work.
The point is having somewhere your worth doesn’t depend on how useful you were this week. When work stops being the only room where you get to feel like you matter, you can look at the job itself much more clearly.
When you picture leaving, name what you’d miss
The next time you picture handing in your notice, notice what you’re actually scared to lose. Is it the work, or the people?
If it’s the people, write their names down. Then write one thing you could do to keep each real relationship going after you leave. Maybe a standing coffee, or a text on the first Friday of the month.
The team you love today will change anyway. People leave, reorgs happen, and managers disappear from Slack overnight. Staying in a role that’s wrecking you won’t keep the group together.
So if you stay, stay because the work and the place still fit. And go build some belonging that’s yours.
Sources and further reading
- The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation, Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary (1995)
- Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation, U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory (2023)
- American Time Use Survey, 2025 Results, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2026)
- Loneliness in America 2025, The Cigna Group (2025)
- Americans are less likely than others around the world to feel close to people in their country or community, Pew Research Center (2024)
- How Americans View Their Jobs, Pew Research Center (2023)
- Loyal workers are selectively and ironically targeted for exploitation, Matthew L. Stanley, Christopher B. Neck and Christopher P. Neck (2023)
- Mental health effects of unemployment and re-employment: a systematic review and meta-analysis of longitudinal studies, Occupational and Environmental Medicine (2025)
- Working Identity, Herminia Ibarra
- Six Areas of Worklife, Michael Leiter and Christina Maslach
I’m Tara Kermiet — career coach, burnout strategist, and host of The Balanced Badass Podcast®. I help high-achievers and corporate leaders design careers that are successful and sustainable.
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