To leave our business?

[SelfEmployedNightmare]

DH and I have our own business together, it works quite well because we both have seperate roles within it, we've been doing it for about ten years. I always worked in a similar role to what I do now. We employ a small handful of other people. We've done fairly well with it, and the huge positive is the money, on a good year I earn up to about £15k above what I would get if I were employed in a similar role, on a bad year it will more or less break even.

My problem is, I don't like being self employed. I prefer working in a team, I like the structure and having clear expectations of what I need to achieve. I was never interested in managment or anything like that. I have also long suspected I may have ADHD and struggle sometimes with focusing on tasks and self motivation which were never an issue when I was employed. It's so relentless being self employed, especially with people working for us, I feel an immense pressure to make sure that their jobs are safe etc. We also have no work/life balance - we work evenings and weekends and will talk about work in bed or when we're walking the dogs or watching a film on a weekend. We've tried to improve this but it still creeps in.

I'm not handling it all very well. My mental health has been getting progressively worse and at the minute it's awful. I'm extremely anxious and very depressed and I think it's work that's the cause of it. I can't sleep because I dread the morning coming. I really want to leave and get an employed job again, but I'm also scared to do that because I'm scared of the change. We really want to TTC but I keep putting it off because I can't bring a baby into all this stress, I don't even know how it would work to have one and still have the business to run and I'm not mentally in a good place, but I really want to be a Mum and time isn't on my side.

DH says he will support me either way, but thinks I'm mad to even consider it, mainly because of the money but I can tell he worries about me doing it as it will put a lot of strain onto him for him to take control of it on his own, I don't know if I'd ever really be able to make a clean break or I would always just get pulled back into it.

I just keep imagining just chucking my phone into a river and running away, it ridiculously seems like the most reasonable solution.

AIBU to want to leave our business?

He doesn’t need to run it on his own. He can take the salary that is now used to pay you and hire another manager.

if course you can’t stay if it’s affecting your health.

Can't you go part-time in your own business? If not, then why not? Have you factored in holiday pay, Bank holiday pay, out of social hours pay, pension contributions in your calculations? Maybe the money is not that great after all. What about selling up (your husband would have to agree of course). I used to run a business (with my husband helping out alongside his full-time job). It almost destroyed our marriage. The best thing I did was to get pregnant and get the hell out of it.

Thank you for the replies

@Tiredbehyondbelief I could go part time in theory, but I've already tried to cut my hours down and it doesn't really work, because it just creeps in everywhere and if something comes up that needs doing, I need to do it. It's not necessarily the work itself that's stressful, moreso the responsibility and pressure of everything that comes with it.

I'm really worried it will destroy our marriage. I love DH a lot but I feel resentful towards him about this all, and it's sometimes quite hard to tell where the business ends and the marriage starts, and so me being unhappy about my job is making me feel unhappy about DH too, if that makes sense. Did you find things got better with you two once you weren't self employed or were there other factors as well?

Hi, sorry for the late reply, I work shifts (as a midwife) so I was very busy for a couple of days. This is what I get so far 1. you are really stressed about the business to the point you want to chuck your phone in the river and never think about business again 2. you really would like a baby however you cannot contemplate bringing a child into the world amongst this stress 3. you are beginning to resent your husband because of the situation you are in. 4. you say you tried working part-time and it didn't work 5. you husband says he will support you in whatever decision you take, however you worry the business would be too much for him to handle on his own. Whan I put it like this, what do you think would be the most sensible option? I would say it's to have a clean break, focus on yourself and start being a wife (and a Mum) you always wanted to be (please don't put off having babies you want a child - I speak from a professional experience). However, I appreciate it's easy to give advice about someone's else problem. It seems to me one way forward would be for your to have a few sessions with a professional counsellor. You might have to go private as NHS waiting lists are far too long. However I think it would be a very good idea as 1. your mental health at the moment is a mess 2. you really can't see the way forward 3. you probably need a few hours of someone listening to all the ins and outs of your situation not just a few lines on Mumsnet. As for my situation, I was the only one self-employed, my husband was helping alongside his full-time job. Yes, things got a lot better between us since my catering business failed in recession of 2008. In the end, I just got the courage to get pregnant and once the baby was born I couldn't handle the stress any more so I let the business go (not before I tried though - I almost killed myself with stress - however I realised I needed to focus on my child). I eventually trained as a midwife once both children (2nd came along) were at school. I can't be happier now.