My husband and I have been together since our teenage years. We are both now in our early 30s and have 2 beautiful young children together.
We both trained into professional jobs with 5 years each at uni.
Until graduation the power dynamic always seemed reasonably equal. Both of us had extra jobs at uni when we could and we would compromise when essay deadlines etc approached.
We are both coming up 10 years since graduation now and I have moved onwards in my career (with a side step but still related field). His first graduate job he ended up on long term sick and then reduced duties after bullying by a superior. I supported him through this. Both our mental health had taken a turn when I had a miscarriage around the same time. This seemed to have precipitated alot of his mental health issues. Within a year I was pregnant again.
In early pregnancy he quit this job (he says before they let him go). He got a zero hour contract job in retail and has since bounced from job to job with a few failed business attempts along the way.
Each time he has left a job someone else has been at fault and since this first one jobs have lasted anywhere from 6 weeks to 9 months at most. In under a decade he has probably held 14 or so different roles.
Because of this his income has never been very predictable and this has been a source of massive stress for me. I work in a public sector role with very fixed pay scales and progression and I know I am very lucky. It's also the kind of role where I can pick up overtime when I need to. So I have repeatedly over the years to plug the gaps he is leaving.
Part of this is definitely naivety on my part for believing when he got better roles that they would stick. During a better paid stint when my faith was restored we bought a nicer house in a nicer area. I told him at the time the expectation was that he would need to maintain the same level of pay or else the mortgage would not be sustainable. And then the rates and everything else went up. And we have ended up in a fair amount of debt (~18k) mostly paying for food and petrol as mortgage and bills are taking all our wages. Obviously this isn't sustainable and we are moving to a smaller house to get the equity out and live in our means again.
I should point out this is now the second time we have had to sell a house after we have gotten into debt after he has lost a job.
I feel like I can't trust him to provide any level of income at all and the stress it has caused over the years has been substantial.
Aside from this he also has a habit of jumping down my throat about inconsequential things. This culminated in a split last year. I had rang him on my way to work for a chat and he was in afoul mood and I was trying to talk him round. He was anxious and I was too. We were both stressing about different things. I was trying to commiserate with him. He told me I could f* off. At this point we had been having couples therapy for 3 months to try and repair the relationship. I found this really hard and ended up sat in a church before work bawling my eyes out. (I am not religious in anyway I just thought it was a safe place cry).
The next day we split and I thought that would be it but then we ended up back together after a couple of months. I think for me a combination of not wanting to miss out on the kids and still being attracted to him and wanting to have sex with him.
Fast forward a few months and the good behaviours he had picked up from couples counselling (6 months+) are not as solid. The sniping has started again. And I still live in fear he will lose his job any moment.
Is this something that can be worked through? Have other people managed and made it better?
Is this just normal marriage gripes and I am making too much of a big deal?
Apologies very long winded and thanks if you got this far!!!