To be sick of my husbands toxic job

[TaraRhu]

Hi all

My husband works in operatikms for a big brand company. He is well paid but his job is a nightmare and I'm at the end of my tether

The environment is toxic. They constantly make people redundant, restructure or come to arrangements with people to let them go. He's literally the last one standing that hasn't left for one reason or other.

They change the company strategy almost weekly with new targets, new strategies and new hires. I'd love to know the recruitment position as I can't think some of the things they have done are legal. They recently promoted someone and demoted him a week later. There's always a different person in charge and it's a totally mind 'f&ck' in the absence of another word.

My husband is really stressed. He is grumpy the whole time, snapping at us all and doesn't want to do anything at the weekend. I think the constant anxiety is damaging his mental health. He disagrees and says he's fine and things will settle down. It's been like this for several years. It's bad for our family and our marriage. I feel totally drained by his constant complaining about it. But also the burden it places on me to take more of the mental load and forgo my own career development as his job rules. There's no space for me to challenge myself or take a promotion because I need to be flexible to pick this kids up, stuck in a safe role with very little chance of redundancy in case he gets let go.

I've started to say 'I'm sorry I can't listen to this anymore' which is harsh but I need him to find someone else to vent to.

He is really bad at handling stress and just sits on his phone all night ina a daze1. He needs to find some outlet for it or ideally tackle the source of the stress (the job).

He has said a few times he will look for something but never does. I know he stays because of the pay and that he thinks is for our benifit. But I'd much rather he loose a few k and get some fun back. What should I do?

It does seem like he should start looking elsewhere but it’s so difficult when you are stuck in a toxic environment like that to motivate. Does he work in the telecoms industry?

Are the kids joint? Just looked like a typo ‘this kids’ could be ‘his kids’.

It's a typo. Defo our kids!

I’d persuade him to brush up his CV and send it to some recruiters. He doesn’t have to do anything other than that. If they find a job match he can go along for an interview but doesn’t need to be feel desperate to get it. Instead treat it as practice and just putting feelers out there. It’s much easier to do when you have a job and aren’t under pressure to pay the bills. My DH spent 12 years at his last workplace, straight from uni and was naturally promoted up through several ranks. The thought of interviewing for anything terrified him. It took a lot of work but he finally agreed to send his CV out. His first few interviews went horribly and he says he made an arse of himself. After a few months he realised it didn’t matter, he never saw those people again and was less terrified. He began to feel ok about the rejection (it does help that I was also interviewing for jobs and being rejected left right and centre). After a year he had an interview and landed his next job. I just had to keep reassuring him that it didn’t matter if he got the job or not.

I think you’ve jumped over the problem to the solution. You think he should change his job. The actual problem though, is his attitude. And that you can deal with. Tell him he’s grumpy, snappy and doesn’t do anything at the weekend and this has to stop. Point it out every time. He can solve it himself, maybe that involves a new job.