Not sure what to do

[Sian05]

I’ve been with my husband for over 15 years and we have two primary aged children. The last few years have been tough. He was a teacher but was finding it increasingly stressful, he moved to supply work then covid hit so he had no work. We struggled financially while he found another job for a lot less pay where he currently works. He doesn’t enjoy it and doesn’t find it challenging enough. He has applied for other jobs but not been successful yet.
Understandably this has all had a toll on his mental health and the chilled, happy man I used to be married to is now frequently moody and stressed, much more short tempered and finds it hard to see the positive in life anymore. He worries a lot about money and thinks if he can get a better paid job he will be happier as he feels a failure for the wage he is on.
He has had some counselling and is on anti depressants and there are occasions when I see the ‘old’ him but not often.
His change in character has affected me in turn and I know I can also be more short tempered now and feel like I’m walking on eggshells sometimes because I don’t know how his mood will be. We’ve argued more in the last 3 or 4 years than the whole of the previous 15.
I hate living like this and I hate it for my children but I also don’t want to throw away 20 years because I know how good we can be. To be fair he had been having quite a long period of good days but the last few weeks have been more hit and miss I think because he lost out on two more jobs and then I start thinking would we all be happier apart?
I don’t know what to do - some days I love him so much and just want this black cloud of the last few years to lift off him and we can be happy and other times I feel like that’s never going to happen and we argue and just make each other miserable.
I don’t really know why I’m posting I think I just needed to get my thoughts down as I don’t want to talk to anyone in real life about it
Thanks if you read this far any advice or thoughts appreciated

Could he go back to supply teaching?

No he never wants to go back to teaching. It was a source of a lot of the initial stress and supply was only ever meant to be an interim while he looked for something else. It was also difficult because you never knew how much work he would get and how far the money would need to stretch to cover school holidays when he would have no income

Could he do something different related to teaching. Maybe switch from secondary to primary, or teach adults, or move into being a school inspector or something?

Or something training or tutoring related. Creating computer-aided learning courses?

What subject and age groups did he teach?

He will have lots of transferrable skills.

Could he look at moving into something more suited to his personality.Career consultants or What color is your parachute? might be useful. I used the book and if you go through it diligently it helps enormously to steer you into where your interests and strengths are.

Show him your original post? A real heart to heart at least?

Unfortunately, failure and misery are a large part of life for many of us, and I’m not joking. He is so lucky he has a supportive wife and a family. Maybe you would be happier apart? Truly nobody knows but you who sees the whole situation.

Do you work? Could you? Maybe he's better suited to being aSAHP,, or he could work part time?

He does need to stop thinking that his self worth is defined by his job. Tbh, most people hate or dislike their jobs and do them for the money so that they can enjoy the other parts of their lives. Many jobs are stressful/tiring/frustrating. To expect to enjoy work isn't particularly realistic.

Agree about thinking “out of the box” to find what works - could help

Agree about thinking “out of the box” to find what works - could help.

server at MN not working again so do t know if this will be a double post!

I could have written this post about 6 years ago.
My husband was a secondary teacher and had been doing it for 5 years. He'd always been on temp contracts and we always went through upheaval and stress each time they decided to get an NQT for less money.
Eventually some failings by a disgruntled colleague led to him losing his next job and he went into a depressive spiral leading to 12 months of unemployment.
We had a 2 year old at the time.

I have always had my own MH issues so having to deal with my own whilst also trying to dig someone out of theirs was excruciatingly hard. And I had no support as he wouldn't talk to people and his parents had no idea.

I eventually managed to get him a temp role where I worked and it grew from there.
We don't work at the same place anymore (thank God) but it did get him out of the depths.

I think he is still depressed sometimes as he is on a significantly lower salary than he used to be and I am now the higher paid one (but not by much)

We did get back to what we were though if that helps. Our problem was that we had issues before the depression kicked in so we weren't in a good place to start, but we did recover from the unemployment and his withdrawal into himself.
I think he prefers what he does now (works in Finance) as he can shut down at the end of the day and that's it, yet if he wants to gain further qualifications he can (although he won't as he isn't like that)