In the 14 years I've known him, he's been with the same company but had several different roles and several bosses and has complained about every single one of them in a very similar way.
Complaints are generally, they're holding him back, not passing on information, trying to get him to do things in a way he doesn't like or preventing him working to a level of accuracy he likes, always giving him too much work on too short notice and other colleagues being deceptive about what they've done/he's done to make themselves look better.
In an office where most people stick roughly to the 8-hour day they're contracted to, he regularly stays a couple of hours late or goes in at night/over the weekend. He constantly makes vague threats about handing in his notice and getting another job elsewhere for less money or claims he's under attack from managers and will be 'pushed out' but never does anything about looking for another job.
He tries not to bring stress home from work, but my goodness he does.
Today he's told me that yet again he's been given too little time to do something and has been told to get it done well, rather than done perfectly. Amongst some supportive comments I said something about he's being paid to do this job so has to accept that sometimes it means doing what he's told rather than what his integrity tells him should be done. He got cross and said he does this job because . This is lovely but also bollocks, he works in an office, he's not a doctor or a red cross volunteer and although it's linked to something socially good he's in computing not client facing and it was 100% the computing element that he originally drew him to the job.
My frustration is that our lives feel permanently on hold, because I never know what he's going to do; he's never around in the evenings and gets absolutely no thanks or recognition for the extra time he puts in; it's hard to be permanently sympathetic to someone about a situation they could easily change but never do; deep down I think he will always be like this & needs this aggressive/antagonistic atmosphere to perform; once in a while I want an evening to be about me or our children.
So is it me or is he getting the work/life balance wrong??
(I work as well but less hours, less well paid. Enough for us to get by financially and still give the children plenty of family time. In the future I would like to increase hours/responsibility but when I've tried this in the past there has been lots of "I'll support you" but little action to back that up. He earns £32k per year, so reasonable wage, but not enough to make me want to be the 1950s housewife enabling her man!)