'My husband is burned out and can't work in his normally high-paying field. I'm resenting having to go back to work to support us.' UPDATED
"My husband is burned out and can't work in his normally high-paying field. I'm resenting having to go back to work to support us. Help!"
This is part genuine request for perspective/opinions and part getting it off my chest. To sum up, my husband and I have been married 10 years. We have a good marriage and have never faced any truly difficult times. It’ll be difficult to explain everything that goes into this, but I’m happy to expound in the comments.
Basically, the last decade has largely been focused on achieving financial independence. I had never been a very business-oriented person until I met my husband. He is extremely entrepreneurial and his passion for it is catching.
We have run our own businesses together and separately throughout our marriage. The goal has always been to make enough money on location-independent businesses we can live freely. Not necessarily retire, but be have more freedom. Because of his encouragement, I am now on a career path that could easily result in that.
In 10 years, we have moved 25 times, all because better opportunities have presented themselves or current opportunities have dried up. We’re now facing #26 with #27 not far away because #26 doesn’t look like that good of a prospect.
Without giving away details, my business fluctuates greatly. I’ve had months where I pull in mid-5 figures and long stretches of a few hundred. My “career” outside of this is food service with a very definite wage ceiling.
My husband’s “career” is professional and he can easily find a 6-figure salary position. His current online business currently brings in low 4-figures. We have always relied on his going back to work when money runs low. He's in high demand, can practically snap his fingers and get a job. I... cannot.
Here’s the conflict (and where I’ll try to eliminate as much of my bias as possible). My husband is completely burned-out. He physically and emotionally can’t deal with the stress of going to work right now.
He has supported me through the last couple years when my income has been low. I’ve always been aware of my financial contribution and make up for it by carrying the grand majority of the household chores.
Even when I was working 60+ hours as a manager (and pulling in half his wage). But as our savings are dwindling, it’s looking more and more like I’ll have to get a job. That means pushing my business to the backburner, working a physically demanding job, all for a quarter of the pay he could get.
I’m not one to spend money. We didn’t have a wedding. We bought my wedding band three years after we got married. I cut my own hair. I work from home in sweatpants.
It’s not as though I’ve forced him to work jobs he hates in order to provide me with an extravagant lifestyle. I have worked terrible jobs to help provide for us in the past and even when my business isn’t earning a ton, I still put in 50+ hours a week.
I’m craving stability. Not permanence, just the feeling that I can unpack our boxes and not feel like I should save them in a closet knowing in 6-9 months I’ll need them again. We’ve been child-free for years, but the last couple years the topic has been coming up more and more.
Yet I feel it’s impossible to even discuss the idea of starting a family in the face of such uncertainty. I miss my cats (they’re living with my parents overseas). I want a fish tank and a place to hang pictures.
He says, “If you want those things, then make them happen.” Which, fair enough. I completely agree with. I don’t want to rely on him to provide the life I want, however it leaves me feeling a combination of emotions I can’t really put a word to.
I find myself going through mental exercises of, “What would I do in this situation if I were single? How would I support myself?” and I start to feel resentful. I’m NOT single. I’m married. And not only that, I'm not sure I CAN make enough money to support us.
I desperately want him to find what it is he’s meant to do. I don’t care about the money or the dreams of financial independence if it means he’s miserable trying to get there. He’s been trying to work out which direction to change to for the past year and has yet to come up with anything solid.
I know it’s all about give and take, but I can’t help but feel… I don’t know. I don’t have the words. And I’m at a complete loss as to how we resolve this. (BTW, we have talked about all of this about 1,957 times already. There is nothing written here he hasn’t heard before.)
EDIT: I appreciate all the comments and opinions. This got a lot more response than I expected. Just a few things. It's difficult to sum up an entire life in a few hundred words.
- The moves have been for varied and obviously with 25 of them, multiple reasons. Some were because my husband was offered a good job. Others were to be nearer family.
- I've been pursing my side business for the last 3.5 years. The 7 prior to that I was in full time employment, sometimes working a full time job while also helping to run our own business. He has not financially supported me for 10 years.
- I'm not sure where people got MLM from, but I'm in a creative field. As I said, I don't want to reveal details, but I create products and then sell them online. We are not scam artists nor do we have to leave town because people are catching on to our pyramid scheme, lol...
- As far as financials go, again, it's impossible to sum up 10 years of income. But we go through feast and famine periods... times when money is flowing in and times when we live off what we've earned.
We never live outside our means and when money is good, we put thousands a month away to prepare for the down times. It's not a typical way of living so I understand it's not easily relatable.
Here is what readers had to say in response to the OP’s post:
If you're trying to reach financial independence based on location-independent businesses, why on earth do you have to move 25 times in 10 years? Why on earth are you moving for #26 if you think you'll have to move again for #27?
It sounds to me like there is something wrong with how your husband is pursuing financial independence, and I'm worried that your husband is not so much "entrepreneurial" as chasing money schemes up hill and down dale.
After 10 years of working on it, how close are you to your net worth goal? You sound very frugal. Surely after ten years you have a solid nest egg, and are seeing that net worth start to grow through compound interest? Why do you say your savings are dwindling when his business brings in enough money to pay the bills? From a FI/RE perspective, this just doesn't add up.
You'd think that moving every five months might be a sign that they're not doing a very good job of identifying opportunities and need to reevaluate their strategy. What's happening that opportunities fade out in less than half a year?
Or that there's always a new/better option to jump to almost immediately but they don't seem to be moving forward? That kind of lifestyle is exhausting, even if it's working. It really seems like they need to sit down and have a total rethink about their strategic outlook.
10yearperspective (OP)
When I say savings are dwindling... there is a lump of money in the savings account that we never, ever touch and treat as the rock bottom. We never get close to that amount, so in my mind, what we have to live off in "savings" is running out. When we budget, we don't feel like we're doing well unless we're able to put money away at the end of the month.
After 10 years of working we are definitely not where either of us would like to be. That's not to say the experiences and ups and downs weren't worth it. I honestly don't think it's in my husband to buckle down with a 9-5 job and squirrel away money for retirement.
I have always been happy to help him pursue his goals of owning/running his own businesses because I have faith in him. It's clear after talking through this on here, we're at a fork in the road.
A little under 10 months later, the OP returned with an update.
I'm writing partly to sort all this out in my head and partly for outside perspectives - I don't even know what to think anymore. Again, I'm happy to explain any details that need fleshing out if it helps. I'll try to be concise and I truly appreciate you reading.
9 months ago, I posted asking for help about my frustration with going back to work after my husband burned-out in his career (previous post in my history). For the sake of anonymity, I tried to be vague with the details and many thought our work was on the dodgy side.
I don't care about keeping it anonymous... all these factors are relevant. I'm an author - I self-published books and made a decent living doing it for several years. My husband is a software developer and mainly buys existing online companies, and fixes them up to sell.
When that's not working, he tries to work a 'normal' 9-5, but typically lasts no more than 6 months. His last attempt was 1 day. My career before this was in the food industry, which means crap pay, long hours and very sore feet.
I got a job that pays 95% of the bills (the rest is covered by savings). Yeah, I'd rather be working for myself, but I like it. I'm good at it. It's the first time I actually enjoy going to work.
For the last few months, I've been slowly changing and it feels like my husband and I are drifting apart. At first I thought it was a natural phase, things will definitely feel different compared to working under the same roof all day and night. Now... I don't know. From the previous thread:
He says, “If you want those things, then make them happen.” Which, fair enough. I completely agree with. I don’t want to rely on him to provide the life I want, however it leaves me feeling a combination of emotions I can’t really put a word to.
I find myself going through mental exercises of, “What would I do in this situation if I were single? How would I support myself?” and I start to feel resentful. I’m NOT single. I’m married. And not only that, I'm not sure I CAN make enough money to support us.
I AM making enough money to support us and if feels good. It's given me confidence in a way I haven't had before. But, it's also made something glaringly obvious in our relationship... we disagree on just about everything AND we have very little in common.
I'm happy to work on my writing on the side while I work. He thinks I've given up on our dream and have settle for a world (the 9-5, M-F world) he is loathe to spend time in. He sold his business and is still figuring out what he wants to do next. I want to buy a flat in the city.
He wants to move to the country, or use our savings to travel or live remotely. I want to settle for a while and make friends. He thinks there's plenty of time for that in the future. I want to make our home cosy and put up decorations like photos and artwork.
While he likes it, he thinks of it all as just pointless stuff we shouldn't waste money on. I could go on, but you get it.
It feels like literally everything I like, he hates.
I've also realized that most of the moves, most of the big big decisions were things I went along with. I'm not saying he bullied me or anything, just that I didn't feel too strongly one way or the other, so tended to go with what he wanted.
Of course we talked about it, but it rarely was me pulling in the bulk of the income so I didn't feel like I had much of a say. Now I feel strongly about a life direction and have the ability to make it happen, and I feel... guilty?
He says I've changed, that he's the same as he's been, wants the same things he's always wanted. This is me altering the situation, which I agree with. But it's not like it's this massive bait and switch plan. Our entire marriage I've talked about settling down... I'm rambling.
Here's the way I see it. We both love each other and genuinely want to make the other happy, which is why over 10 years, we've both compromised on choices that go against what we individually want.
He goes to work for a little while so I can have a semi-stable home. I bounce around the world with him so he can discover himself and his career. But our tolerance for these periods have become too short to manage.
He physically can't work for another person. I want to scream when I think about packing up my stuff and starting over again. Have we just spent so much of our marriage being distracted by the exciting newness of moving and pushing for financial independence, we didn't notice how little we have in common otherwise?
I can't help but feel like this is on me - not my fault, per se, but on my shoulders. I'm the one rocking the status quo and if I want things to balance out, it's up to me to adjust my expectations.
Here is what readers had to say in response to the OP’s post:
Tbh I can't believe a 35yo man still has such unrealistic expectations about not working for "the man." Like I thought most people got over that by the time they graduated college and realized that paying bills ends up being more important than your never-gonna-happen ideals about the way the world should work. Do you really want to be with someone that stubborn?
You guys sound super incompatible. Is this really the man who you imagine building the life you want with? If you want a chance to keep this marriage afloat, I'd seriously consider couples counseling to see if you can find compromises here that both of you can agree to. If you can't find those compromises, then you should seriously consider moving on.
10yearperspective (OP)
I mean, yeah I want to continue my life with him. I love him, I like him. We do enjoy each other's company. I really think these problems are probably for a professional.
Six and a half years later, the OP returned with their final update.
I'm not sure why now, but I feel compelled to write a followup. Maybe it'll give people the bravery to change or at least an example of how sticking with what you know isn't always the best choice.
An obviously very long story short, with the help of those posts and a lot of long nights of thinking, I left my husband. In fact, it took him going away for a long weekend to realize how much happier and at peace I felt without him around...
At first the split was amicable, but looking back I think he was just waiting for me to come rushing back to him once I "realized my mistake." When that didn't happen and he could see I was actually serious about building a new life for myself, a switch flipped. We only spoke when he needed something from me and eventually that stopped too. Enough about him.
I'm now 42, happier and healthier and more satisfied than I've been my whole life. I picked me and that was the best choice I could've ever made. I lived alone for the first time and my god, the peace of having my own space... unrivaled.
I ended up staying in that apartment for 5 years, not a moving box in sight. I put art on the walls, I knew my neighbors. I made a home. I grew my career and went back to school. Made friends, built a little community.
I've done a ton of therapy and realized that the abusive patterns my parents created in childhood were just repeating with my ex. I fell in love, a real love, a supportive love that encourages growth and security.
I'm doing new work, work that helps people and is so much more than just chasing money. All of those things have created a life that's more rewarding than I ever thought possible for myself.
I've gone through some really awful times too, illness, cancer scares, deaths, loss... but I have no idea how I would've come out the other side without the community I'd built around me.
Even something as simple as people at your local coffee shop recognizing you is a comfort after feeling adrift and alone for so long. Anyway, if I were to respond to myself from 7 years ago, this is what I would say.
Leave the loser. He doesn't care about you, never did. He only cares about what you can do for him and now that you aren't serving him... well. Just go. You are capable of doing difficult things, and you are worthy of the work it takes to accomplish them.
Trust your abilities, trust your gut - it's been screaming at you for years now, honey. Life can be so much more than you've experienced, but you have to make it happen for yourself.
EDIT: I'm surprised but happy this found so many people! I genuinely thought I was going to bookend this story and have it disappear into the ether. But whatever urge I had to write it, and whatever brought you to reading it... who knows? Maybe it was meant to. Thank you for all the messages and comments, I feel so grateful to have this perspective and experience.
Here is what readers had to say in response to the OP’s post:
This is as close to fairy tale ending as this world provides. I’m so happy for you!
10yearperspective (OP)
You brought tears to my eyes. Thank you!
I could not fathom moving 2.5 times each year and I’m surprised that the OP tolerated it for a decade. Good for her for getting out of that relationship.