Annoyed about DH earnings... AIBU?

[Leafygreen25]

Okay so I need a rational opinion on this, because it's something I feel awful even saying, but I need to share...

I am happily married, my husband is a dream and my childhood sweetheart. However, I have this awful niggle of resentment about his earnings and ambition.
I am a secondary school teacher, so I earn a modest but fair wage. My husband works in a 'creative' field, and earns 22k a year... Eek...

I feel that I have made sacrifices to be where I am and earn what I do, all in order to better our lives and the lives of our children. However, my husband is unwilling to make a career change or seek any promotion opportunities to contribute to what I see as 'his side of the deal'. (In this job since 22yrsold!)

I feel awful addressing this with him because I don't know if I am out of line and I don't know how to approach this. I just feel that he is being a little naive and holding on to a pipedream of success in his chosen career, but it is at the detriment of our family lifestyle and well-being.
His job is also highly stressful with long hours, so he often comes home tired and P-off, so I don't even feel that we are gaining in regard to well being or work-life balance!

My question is where do I go with this? I hate to be the nagging wife, and I love him flaws and all, but it is a really unattractive quality and I feel like it is putting unfair pressure on me to pick up the financial slack for the sake of our family.

AIBU to expect him to follow in my footsteps of making personal sacrafices to move to a steady job with a fair wage? (Earning 22k was never part of our vision pre-marriage)

Any advice would be GREATLY appreciated.

I think yabu. Not everyone is ambitious. If you want the job, talk to him about how you can facilitate it.

I was on 20k per year in a field I would've loved, had it not been for the long stressful and depressing hours, inc some weeke d and bank holidays for no extra pay. It wasn't so much about the money at that point, but had I actually been earning a decent amount it may have helped with the stress. I gave it up, because it just wasn't worth the ballache.

You need to:

Agree on your ambitions for your family
Agree how hard you expect each other to work
Agree if/how you use/split your family income
Agree what to do about it between you if there's a mismatch

Provided you can survive, what either of you actually earns is a bit secondary to the above.

Sometimes a lack of ambition isn't about being lazy.

People have different priorities. A couple I know, both very intelligent, degree educated and had an area management job and a senior teaching job got fed up with their work life balance and quit. They now both do pretty much minimum wage jobs which they love.

They have no desire for material things, they can pay their mortgage on their terraced house (they bought it in the 90s before prices went crazy), they're not bothered about new cars, clothes, gadgets, etc. They say they want to work to live, not live to work, they seem very happy.

I think you should go for the promotion if you want to, otherwise you will really resent him. The question is how to make the promotion work with your family commitment and your husband is half responsible for these. But good grief, do not turn down a promotion you want without even discussing the issues with him.

Can you say which industry he is in, op?

Please don't turn down the deputy head role for his 'career'. You two need to have a serious conversation.

Are other posters reading the op?? Her dh is not happy in his job, works long hours and she is unable to accept a promotion due to him.

Op what has he said when you told him you've been offered the job but his work hours mean you can't do it? Is there Aby reasonae to outsource more childcare even if short term it means you don't feel the benefit of the pay rise?
I think his attitude to you giving up your probable ambitions for his pipe dream ones is more important than how much he earns or whether he's ambitious enough for you.

Errr, in your position I’d say there’s not too much to chew over. Go for the £70k job and he needs to change his job to enable childcare. There’s no question of it. Just bear in mind that a £20k gross salary step up in your job doesn’t not cover the £20k that he might loose like for like due to the tax free personal allowance which he gets on his wage versus the higher tax threshold that you will pay. So do the maths first carefully. It sounds like he is being taken advantage of at work on pay but doesn’t have the balls to flag or renegotiate it.

I totally understand this, but he is doing a low paid job that IS highly stressful and isn't 9-5. Basically, I'm not seeing a win in any aspect of his job and in a way neither is he other than a means to an end for a 'creative break'. But I am just at the point where I feel he needs to give up the ghost and focus on the reality of our family. I don't want to crush his dreams, but it also hurts me to see him work so hard and nothing come of it.

What does he think about you not applying for the deputy head position?

Surely you’d be better off having him as a SAHD or going freelance and working from home to cover childcare? Would that appeal to him?

Christ don’t turn down the deputy head job to accommodate his poorly paid, stressful long commute etc. No way. Makes no sense for either of you.

If he has been working for 20 years, with a degree, and struggling to match a basic graduate starting salary then nothing is going to change, so I would stop even imagining that it will.

That may free up some headspace

The problem isn't that he only earns 22k. The problem is that he considers his job to be as important as yours to the family, and that's just not true. A hard financial reality. It is fine to sacrifice salary for work/life balance when you have dc, but he is not doing that. He's not picking up childcare or housework to support you and the dc. He expects you to accommodate him in a job that pays relatively little. YANBU.

£60k between you is very good money in my book. You should be able to manage very well on that. We bring in half that and manage ok.

If it was the other way round, and he was earning £40k and you only £20k, would you be happier? Funny how, even now in these days of equal opportunities, the man is supposed to be the main earner.

Jesus Christ, don't even consider turning down the promotion. Omg.

Don't let it depend on him. He'll either step up to the plate or not, but don't even factor it in. With the pay increase you have enough money to pay for childcare before and after school, with food included. You have enough money for a cleaner.

You would be insane to turn it down.

And tbh if he doesn't step up and change his hours to help the family out, then it's a selfishness problem that's nothing to do with his wage.

I'm a bit staggered you keep saying "only 22k". I know a lot of graduates on that wage that have fought tooth and nail to get on that salary. You sound so elitist and snobby. I hope you don't sneer like this at your husband at home. How awful. Leave the poor man alone and go with someone "on your level"

I agree OP - 22k is a low wage for a man with a family to be earning after 20 years in the same role!
Have the conversation, but submit an application too!

I can understand your frustration that he is still on a younger person's wage but is unable to do his share of childcare and house stuff.

I haven't read the whole thread but I hope you have received some ideas on how to approach this chat with your dh. Hopefully if you sit down and calmly talk it all through he will see that he is not doing his fair share and not only that, is stopping you from progressing.

Don't let him by the way - take the job! Well done. Just wanted to add my support and wish you well with the conversation. Maybe if he is properly "challenged" he will realise that he can no longer take the piss.

Did you say he mentors new grads on a higher wage than his? That's just ridiculous. He needs a pay hike. He should be on upwards of £30k and he needs to stick his arty neck out and creatively ask for it.

Don't turn down the promotion. Would he be able to reduce his hours?

I don't think this is a pay/ambition issue. This is an issue of your DH being a bit selfish. If he can't understand that sometimes (and maybe just temporarily) the lower paid/inflexible job has to make way for the higher paid career, then I think hes being quite self centred.

I earn c £60k, and my DH earns £25k. It's not that he is less important than me, but sometimes my job needs to be prioritised as it is key to covering our main family expenditure.

I think the money is a red herring too.

It sounds like you feel like you've given years? decades? supporting his creative dream. Yet now, when you are offered an opportunity, you realise that the support only goes one way. That is not fair and yanbu to feel resentful.

I would start the conversation with, I'm going to take this job, I'm so excited and it will be great for our family! If he's going to be an unhelpful dick, then I'd just look for solutions that don't involve him (before/after school care, nanny, friends/grandparents etc)

You can't force him to get it but you don't have to martyr yourself either.

Yes but Ffs are you on your own ??

Go for the dept head role. Do not consider passing it up. Your DH needs to be told changes have to be made. Parenting isnt just your responsibility. He either finds a job that fits in better with the family needs, or requests flexible working.

Or leave him as youve grown and he hasnt and that builds resentment.

I don’t think you can make someone give up a job/career.

I appreciate its low paid and stressful and he doesn’t even like it but it sounds like such a big change and he is not up for it. You could raise the subject and have a serious discussion about it but don’t put pressure on him.

Together you should be able to live a comfortable life on your salaries.

I do get that it is not ideal to be with someone who is unambitious but you can’t fundamentally change him. My exh refused to work at all (made money in other ways) and it was a major factor in the breakdown of our marriage. He still doesn’t work 7 years after we divorced. What I thought of it made no difference at all.

It seems to me you're doing a lot more than 50% of everything, and him staying in this job is requiring a lot of other sacrifices from family members, for not much in return.

You were wrong, I think, to frame it purely in terms of money, because that's only part of it. If he were earning half of what you did but there were quantifiable benefits to the rest of the family such as him being around more, flexibility, doing more childcare, being local in the event of emergencies or even just him being really happy, there would be a different argument. But at the moment he expects you to facilitate him doing a job that not only doesn't bring a lot in but also makes your life harder. There is no way I would tolerate him being pissed off in the evenings on a regular basis because of work and doing nothing to address it, unless maybe we were all getting something significant out of it. And tbh even if it were well paid I still almost certainly wouldn't.

So I would agree he isn't pulling his weight and it's perfectly ok for you to be resentful of that. It makes zero sense for the family for you to be in a position where you're considering not taking the promotion, and yet him insisting on staying in a long hours, longer commute, high stress, low childcare availability job is part of that.

Also, even before your update, the people telling you to retrain if you want more money sounded silly. 40k is more than the large majority of the population earn, teaching offers the opportunity to earn significantly more than that in leadership roles, and being forced into doing the majority of the childcare because of DHs job choices is hardly conducive to retraining either!