If you were having a particularly stressful time at work, would you use your partner as an outlet? To rant?

[ReeseWitherfork]

Just that really… if you were having a particularly stressful time at work, would you rant to your partner? Say, every day was a struggle. But it was only temporary so no point quitting. Imagine you just needed somewhere to have a rant. Would you rant to your partner? How often is it acceptable to rant?

Dh and I rant about work almost daily. We usually get home, have a hot drink and both moan. We literally sound off each other.

We do have a sort of cut off where we stop and get on with our evening and no more work talk.

No. I prefer to go through my thoughts and frustrations in exercise instead. I've offloaded to him before and he doesn't care, and I don't expect him to, and I'd just get more wound up talking to someone who is disinterested. We chat at a very high level - "I had a good day at work today - looking forward this" Or "work was shit, I'm not enjoying it - I'm going for a run".

Really interesting set of replies. “Vent” definitely seems more of an appropriate word than “rant”. It’s interesting that those of you have had husbands die miss it now. Must make a note to ask my husband more about his day!

I’ll try and keep it brief, bit of a long one…

A friend is doing some sort of qualification for work. She’ll be on the same job when she has done it but will get the full pay (I think; I don’t fully understand). I asked her how it was going and she burst into tears. Just said it was really stressful juggling work and studying, that the tutor isn’t very helpful, and a couple of the other people doing it don’t sound like team players. I tried to console her but really don’t know enough about it. Her (soon to be) husband is in the same industry so I asked if he had helped navigate it much. She said she couldn’t talk to him about it anymore.

Doesn’t sound like he has outright asked her not to, but something along the lines of him getting upset that she was so upset and not knowing what version of her he’d come home to. She didn’t feel she could vent (not rant!) to him anymore as she’d overdone it, and he couldn’t mentally take on her stress.

It got me thinking about where the cut off is. Poor girl said she’d cried most days the last week (WFH) and I felt awful that she had no shoulder to cry on. But at the same time, he is allowed to put up boundaries.