To be annoyed about DH changing career?

[3ormoredogs]

I know I probably sound selfish here but I had to ask anyway.

DH is a teacher. He is quite high up band wise. While training I supported him and have done the bulk of the childcare and running of the household while he worked himself up and trained, went on multiple courses and stayed up late working etc.

My career suffered through being a parent but I still work almost full time and contribute £25k/year to the family pot as well as doing most of the drop offs and pick ups and usual child related activities! I am also mid qualification to try and increase my own income but I don’t work in a high paid sector so DH is the main earner.

DH obviously does the childcare during school holidays which saves us a small fortune and means he can spend time with the DC. He is also home early enough to help and the job is pretty stable so we don’t tend to worry as some people have had to during corona etc.

We have finally started to pull ourselves around financially. Not rich but can afford to buy the odd nice thing without worrying and go on camping holidays that type of thing. We have just got out of debt. We have also just bought a new house that requires a lot of work, top of our budget but a family home in a rural area with good schools which we were planning on doing up bit by bit.

DH has hated his job for a while, moved around a bit to different roles in different schools and has now declared he wants to leave teaching and retrain. Apparently he can’t cope with the job any more and it’s causing him to be miserable and lockdown has made him see just how miserable. He has also said he’s been having anxiety at work for a while and does not want to cope with that amount of stress and pressure for the next 30 years.

I feel bad that he hates his job but don’t know how I can pretend I’m not very annoyed when he is talking about a drop in income of at least £20k which would mean an end to being able to afford anything for the next 5 years. We do not have any luxuries we can cut back on and very much live comfortably but not enough to loose £1k per month or whatever it would be.

He said his mental health is more important than money and his family think I’m selfish for saying this is not something we can look into with small children having just bought a house and that he needs to stick it out a while longer.
Not only that but the lack of job security really worries me in these uncertain times, he hasn’t even decided what he wants to do yet! He said a trade of some description or maybe police force as he thinks as a teacher he would have a good chance of getting in? Plus the shift work and childcare issues it’s going to create.

So, am I a selfish person thinking about my own happiness or should I be supporting my husband and thinking we could make this work?

Anybody dropped massively in income who can tell me it would be okay in the end?

I can't see this as a one is right or wrong thing, I cannot imagine (I have in the past) being in a job I hate but I also cannot imagine being relied on for someone elses career or me relying on them.

My husband and I have 9-5 type jobs so neither of us has had to sacrifice anything for the other.

It is not fair for one person to put their life on hold for another but if a person has mental health issues over a job then that cannot be healthy. It is all well and good taking a massive pay drop but if this means the other person has to earn more to make it up is that fair? (well work more hours to do so, not just wave a magic wand and the money appears)

But I am wondering how on earth policing is considered less stress than teaching (no I have not done either but I would assume they would possibly be equally stressful)?

And what happens if the DH does not like the next career then the next?

When will the OP get to step back?

I don’t understand why you’re getting a hard time! I’m a teacher, it is stressful at times but I don’t think it’s as simple as walk off into the sunset with a new job! When you’ve got young children you do need to think about everyone. I really feel for you in all this x

Seriously, I would begin by applying to drop one day. He may find that will help enormously with stress levels and workload.

You’ll still be taking a drop in income, but it won’t be as devastating and may give him more headspace to plan his next steps effectively.

He’s being selfish.. you are finally in a place where you can do nice things and have a bit of a life after you supported him training before and now all of a sudden he wants to drop 20k at least to retrain.

He’s an adult and needs think like one instead of thinking ‘me me me’.

You can’t just roll out the MH line and that makes it ok. Bills need to be paid, that’s life.

I would not support my partner dropping 20k or more to Change jobs while it meant the rest of the family suffered.

@Potterpotterpotter

He’s being selfish.. you are finally in a place where you can do nice things and have a bit of a life after you supported him training before and now all of a sudden he wants to drop 20k at least to retrain.

He’s an adult and needs think like one instead of thinking ‘me me me’.

You can’t just roll out the MH line and that makes it ok. Bills need to be paid, that’s life.

I would not support my partner dropping 20k or more to Change jobs while it meant the rest of the family suffered.

Wow! What a supportive wife you are. Having a break down won't be good for the family either. Teaching us incredibly stressful and he's telling his wife he can't do it anymore - how dare he!

We all have to do things we don’t like in life. Suck it up and retrain park time on a evening so it doesn’t mean his family have to go without. OP has already supported him training once at the cost of her own job but oh well that doesn’t matter now as he’s decided he doesn’t like his job.

Part time*

I would see if he would move into the independent sector if he is good at his subject but just doesn't like the high stakes measurement and judgement of everything. Obviously you are accountable still but less obsession about data due to not following govt data metrics. Although you might have said he doesn't like his subject much? If that is the case then leaving teaching obviously would be sensible!

Op you arent being selfish. My ex did this to me just as I was about to go on maternity leave, timing wasn't great but if they are depressed they aren't thinking about when is the right time to do something. You need to work together, have all your costs you need to cover on a spreadsheet, then work out income to cover that. Then decide what can be cut or changed to accommodate change in income.

Maybe he's just feeling anxiety as he's been off for so long, when he gone back agree to set a date to talk again see how he is feeling by October half term, if he's feeling the same way then sit and talk again. In the meantime he needs to investigate all the serious job ideas he has about switching to and find some people already doing them to talk about what its actually like, stress, income, overtime etc.

He just can't do it all now, surely he can see that - this will affect your mental health too if he does.

I also wonder if you hadn’t mentioned it was teaching if you would have had responses saying it was fine and you should support him.

That’s because those of us in teaching have seen many colleagues struggle with mental health problems and know how serious it can be.

Primarily, it's because a huge proportion of Mumsnet users (about 25% in the last stats I saw) work in teaching. So you have attracted a lot of responses from teachers, thinking about how they would feel in your DH's position and relating that directly to their and their colleagues' experience of teaching.

If you'd said he was a project manager in an engineering firm, or did marketing, or something in the city, you wouldn't have attracted that level of poster-identification with his role. You would have had a lot more posters looking at this from your point of view, not his.

People get stressed, burnt out and suffer MH problems in all sorts of professions. They work long hours, feel intense responsibility and suffer poor and over-zealous management in all sorts of professions. Some people are more prone to stress and to it running out of control, than others. Some people have underlying MH problems. We have almost all seen these things happen to people, across the employment board.

It sounds as though he is panicking and may well jump from frying pan to fire.

From some direct experience of these issues (not in teaching), I would say two things:

1. Knowing there is an end point in sight and he does not have to carry on with this forever can be a huge relief. So a year to carry on while properly researching other options and putting an alternative plan in place. Time built in to consider those options.

2. Changing employer can make a vast difference. Often, different management style and more supportive colleagues are enough to make all the difference, even in a very similar sort of job. There are different sectors and very different schools within the broad heading of 'teaching'.

don’t understand why you’re getting a hard time

Me neither, nowhere has OP said he shouldn't leave teaching, but that he shouldn't leave without another job or more of an idea of what he could do for work. Sounds entirely reasonable, and I wonder how many people facing the same scenario would be quite as supportive or quick to tell him to quit.

He thinks being a police officer is less stressful?

I think a sideways move would be better than a complete change of career eg if he could move to work in the education dept at your local authority, so his knowledge / expertise are relevant

So I think the most helpful thing you can do, is help him break down this overwhelming feeling of 'it's all terrible, I need to get out' into a plan of action, with manageable bite size chunks.

Help him make a project plan, for project 'future job', with many small steps, each arriving at clearly identified, meaningful milestones. Support him in working through that. The sense of taking back control achieved by meeting one milestone after another should be considerable in itself. Gradually, he should start to be able to see the wood for the trees again.

A huge benefit of a clear plan, with milestones, is that if he / you plural, find that things have veered off in a direction that seems like a dead end, you can retrace your steps to the last milestone that seemed comfortable or to make sense, then proceed forward in a different direction from there.

You should do the same thing for yourself, career-wise.

You need an over-arching 'what works for this family' framework, that these plans can fit within. This will allow you both to see what the implications are of changes on one or other adult's employment status. That gives you a firm basis for discussing which changes can be made, how and by whom and what changes other family members and the family as a whole, can and will accommodate.

There are other careers his teaching degree can transfer to. Look around to try that first. I used to work at a uni in learning development. Most of my colleagues were ex teachers & it's a very interesting & dynamic area. It was quite well paid, too. There's also adult education companies, which teach qualifications online & students are pretty much autonomous & follow set work - no lesson plans.

Lots of other places teaching can get you. At least if he gives it a go he'll be out of teaching & can consider options.

Oh and also - and actually the first and most important thing to say here - is that if he has experienced a prolonged period of feeling miserable and experienced anxiety, he needs to get himself to his GP, to discuss anxiety and depression, pronto.

Are you selfish to think of your own happiness whilst your husband isn't allowed to think of his own happiness? In a word, yes.

So he's no good at tech. Doesn't enjoy his written subject. Doesn't like pressure or being judged. Kind of narrows his options down.

What IS he good at? Is he practical? Good with fixing things? Good at making/building things? You are doing up the house had he been doing that or both of you together? A trade isn't that easy. Electrician and boiler engineer/comms engineer are the higher end of trade but you do need to be techie.

Plumbers are well paid. Other trades like maybe specialising in flooring or plastering, or bricklaying require a high degree of manual skill. And can be not well paid sometimes. Plus can be physically exhausting. Is he super fit?

What about as a person? Is he confident and enjoys dealing with people? Super personable? Good with money? Good with numbers?

Because so far it sounds like he likes being a student and he likes looking after the children at home. Which isn't compatible with having a wife and children.

@DoTheNextRightThing

Are you selfish to think of your own happiness whilst your husband isn't allowed to think of his own happiness? In a word, yes.

Is it selfish to want a life for your children that doesn't involve poverty? The op has no holidays away (camping. Nothing abroad) and they won't even be able to afford ice creams. Hardly buying dolce and gabbana while he slaves at the coal face with his 10 weeks a year holiday is it?

You can’t just roll out the MH line and that makes it ok.

What an unpleasant comment.

I think you made sacrifices so he could follow his chosen qualification and its not unreasonable for him to do the same until you have finished your qualification. Once your goal is achieved he can come first again til then it's your turn.

When my OH was 42 he left his GP practice to just do locums as his mental health was suffering. This was a decision that I fully endorsed and encouraged as I could not watch him suffering any longer. It meant a huge drop in income, a house move from a lovely home to a box and an increase in work hours for me. And some school juggling for the children.

A massive decision, but one which I never regretted. When he eventually retired early he was instantly diagnosed with Parkinsons Disease and spent the next 10 years in a miserable decline, finally dying in February of this year.

I am not trying to pull your guilt strings or be over-dramatic, but working in a job that is causing serious stress is a bad thing for the person involved and for all their family.

My DC were aware of what was happening, even though they were small, and now always say that they learned a valuable lesson from this family decision. Never did they complain about the reduction in our housing or our financial opportunities. They learned that money is not everything and that families have to pull together to support the weakest member at any point in time.

I really think you must support your OH in this job change and give him every encouragement. Until you have been in a job that totally drags you down, it is difficult to understand how detrimental to the whole family this can become. He is not just throwing in the towel but making a reasoned decision and seeking training to pursue a different career that hopefully will bring him some job satisfaction and relieve his stress, to the benefit of you all. He really will thank you in the years to come.

I know it is hard, but this is what being part of a partnership and a family is about: rallying round and supporting each other when the going gets tough for one member.

Would he do the same for you if you were in this difficulty?

At the risk of getting an informal name of 'retweet' - everything that @lottiegarbanzo just said. DH is a teacher. We have experience of redundancy and stressful school situations. We also know people who were in your husband's shoes in terms of wanting to walk out and never look back.

A LOT of people are feeling extremely stressed at the moment by COVID and by the change that going back to work in an office setting/onsite is going to bring. Your husband's feelings are not unique. It is not asking too much of him to take a deep breath and work to December (for example) then decide if he really does want to resign. It will be clearer where things stand with COVID - if he really needs to leave his current school, he should be able to get agency work to tie things over and create some 'headspace' to think about whether he really does want to leave teaching and what a re-train/re-configuration of his career might look like.

The people we know who did this did not end up leaving teaching after all but, like some others said, were grateful they'd made the switch. I am not suggesting not doing nothing.

I do have one question for you though:

Is your husband really telling you he is about to be made redundant?

And actually this is what he is trying to prepare you for and an effort to take control of the situation? Because contrary to what people are saying on this thread, you can lose your job as a teacher and our experience of some academy chains is that the circumstances around this feel very similar to any private sector situation.

I don't mean to scare you but if he is trying to hide this from you so you don't feel stressed, but you discover this is the situation, my advice here (and I think a lot of other people's) would be VERY different.

Would he consider a time limit on carrying on working? He's had 6 weeks presumably of not working and not having much face to face during lockdown? Could he just work 2 more years to help with the family finances, have counselling and maybe anti depressants, and during that time look into a change in career?

I would be annoyed too and hope he just doesn't enjoy being the perpetual student life at your expense.

If he really is on the brink I guess you all just have to suck it up and reassess your finances. He should certainly take a back seat if he stops work and allows you to earn more while taking in the mental load of family life