to think my husband is not supportive about my work?

[albertatrilogy]

He is retired and ten years older than me.

I do some work from home and other agency work which involves providing cover when a particular area of local government is short staffed. This means I'm around during the day sometimes and there's also a chance for us to go out now and then during the working week.

However, a particular source of tension is that it's really hard for me to talk to my husband about the agency work I do. Although many of my colleagues are pleasant and the work can be enjoyable, the cuts and pressures on the service mean that the work can be demanding at times.

The problem is that I ever talk about a problem of this kind, almost before I've got my mouth open, my husband explodes. He'll say things such as that I ought not to be exploited in this way/ it is absolutely terrible/what is the council thinking of/what are the unions doing/my colleagues are appalling/I shouldn't be exploited in this way.

On occasions when he's come to pick me up from work, he has also hung round glaring at my colleagues unpleasantly.

So it's actually hard to even describe whatever it was that happened on that particular day because he goes off on rant. I've asked him not to do this - but he always says that it's because he wants to support me.

Last night he went off on a rant again. I shouted at him. I am still fed up this morning.

What do you think?

Can you tell him to calm the fuck down and speak like a adult in charge of his faculties?

Is he jealous?

I don't think he's going about it the right way, but I can see how he thinks he's being supportive.

Why on earth does he 'explode? Is this part of a more general behaviour?
I presume you've told him that it's not supporting you and yet he still does it?

Does the stress you get put under come out when you are with your husband, maybe he sees you show signs of stress which worries him and he gets angry about it?

I think it depends on several things if you're being UR.
My DM had a stressful job and everyday she would come home and rant for some time about her work. Each time she would come home and complain about the same things, dismissing any suggestions etc. Whilst I realise that she was stuck and that she probably didn't want solutions, the same work related issues dominated every evening with no hope for any change.
We would also watch my mother become stressed and snappy everytime she worked in that department which affected our family life. Watching DM become regularly snappy, disengaged and in a foul mood every time she worked there was really hard for the rest of us!

It may be that your husband thinks you want him to help fix it, or that he finds it difficult to listen to issues that no one is solving.

Or he is massively unsupportive

Oh this sounds a lot like my DH. I teach piano and I darent ever complain about it to him. If I grumble about a pupil or their parents he'll immediately say "just get rid of them. I'll phone them now". If I moan again he'll say "why are you still grumbling, I said I'd get rid of them for you." Then he glares at the parents when they arrive and I have to have stern words with him. It's exasperating! I would not have a business at all if I let him "fix" it.

I did try mentioning this and he said he gets cross that they are upsetting me and he wants to fix it for me so I don't have stress. He said he just wants me to be happy. I said I just wanted a moan and I wouldn't be happy if I had no business because I do really love it, just that every job sometimes comes with annoyances. He still struggled to see it, wondering why I was telling him if I didn't want him to sort it out.

I now do one of two things. One is moan to other people such as friends or my adult daughters or my mum. The other is to say to him before I moan "Can I moan to you about something? I don't need you to fix it for me, I just need someone to moan to." He still finds it hard but it works much better.

Can you tell him to calm the fuck down and speak like a adult in charge of his faculties?

Way to diffuse the situation.......

Yes, that it's it musicpony. Good to know that I am not alone.

I will quite often come home from work and say that it's been a good day - that I've had interesting people to work with and/or that there was some enjoyable incident. I also talked to my husband over Easter about the way in which I felt the agency work - though not particularly well paid - worked well in terms of the flexibility it afforded us. (I can turn down work if we plan to do something together during the working week.)

So although I sometimes come home tired, I certainly don't moan every day. Given a cup of tea and a bit of time to recharge, I'm fine....

I don't see the point of talking about problems, if you don't expect/want a solution. You are transferring the stress/unpleasantness onto someone else. Actually not just transferring, multiplying it, so that not just the original person but someone else is now suffering from it. I think he is angry because your work is causing him a problem that he's not even being paid to put up with.

I know there's a theory that talking about problems somehow helps. I think this is bat-shit crazy and the exact opposite of the truth. Even ignoring the harm you are doing to the person you tell, you are are giving more airtime to the problem in your own head as well, increasing the number of minutes of your own life that are damaged by it.

My exh used to moan all the time about my job under the guise of supporting me. Actually it just made me feel completely stressed and unhappy. I actually think in hindsight he was doing it to undermine and isolate me. He used to yell at me about it too, for eg yelling about my boss or that I shouldn't be putting up with xyz. So I'm probably a bit biased but I'd be cynical about someone's motives when they're getting cross with you but insisting they're supporting you. Supporting you would be making you a cup of tea and telling you how great you are at it.

I think last night I'd have welcomed a good conversation about a particular problem at work,

It would have helped me to work out why the situation evolved as it did, and whether it was likely to recur. We could have discussed how I or my colleagues might have acted differently, and whether the line manager should be informed.

This is the sort of conversation I used to have with him when he was working and came home and talked about difficult situations that arose.

I didn't rant at him about how terrible his employers were and how I angry I felt. It was more a question of finding out a bit more about the situation and seeing what his options were.

Firesuit - I htink you have a very good point - and not a very popular one usually.

I am trying so hard to keep problems to myself, I had exactly this situaiton on my relationship. I would rant about kids/work to my DP and later to my older DD and my DP would get angry on my behalf. He'd say "Tell them to,,,/ Just leave...Why don't you...?" and I'd say "I can't because....."

I'd think he was being unreasonable, He'd be frustrated and furious. He didn't understand that I just wanted a hug. I didn't understand what this was doing to him.

We are no longer together but my DD tells me that I do this and it makes me hell to live with if I am having a bad time. I am listening. (I rant on MN instead!

Has anyone read Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus? This exact situation is described! I didn't realise it was actually real, but maybe, reading this, it is!

(men getting angry if you dont accept their proposed solutions and not realising that women are actually just asking them to listen... Not that i think the men/women dichotomy is necessarily always right, but it seems from this it sometimes is!)