Please help: Husband in career crisis

[Worriedbyname]

Hi All,

I’ll do my best not to ramble here. I’d really appreciate your advice if you’ve had similar circumstances and what you did to turn it around.

My husband and I have been married a couple of years and together for 5 before that. He can’t get a full time decent job. He has been out of work for over a year. He was made redundant during lockdown from his job of 4 years and is still shellshocked by it. I mean, it was distressing for him, but it looked to me like he was ‘handled out’. He was made redundant from a job before that due to a merger.

We had a baby 8 months ago. I had to go back to work when the baby 5 months because we just couldn’t afford SMP with him not working. I feel furious about that because I didn’t feel ready. Im still getting myself together after birth and an exceptionally hard pregnancy. I wanted the time with our baby, but he has it.

In his most recent job over a year ago, his contract was a maternity cover, and then they went back out to open recruitment for a further 6 months instead of just extending his contract. He didn’t apply and left to avoid being humiliated. The person who has since got the job is 15 years younger and was made permanent.

He’s mid 40s, very intelligent, well read person. He’s kind and considerate. I used to think it’s just a run of bad luck and that his sector (education) is in a bad way, but now my gut says he’s just not very bright in the workplace.

His type of work has really suffered with lots of education moving to remote/digital working, but he won’t retrain to expand his horizons. He applies for quite a lot of roles, all around the £35k mark (which is just not enough, but I don’t say this). He’s got interviews, and how I cringe when I listen to him waffle. He won’t take advice from me and refuses to practice with me for the interviews. He is not great with MS Teams either for remote working.

i can’t tell you how much I’ve tried to help and support him. I’ve paid our every bill alone for over a year now. It has min in debt - not a lot, but some. I worked up until the day I gave birth to max my mat leave. He hasn’t bought a sock for the baby. I stay up and find jobs for him to apply to. I revamp his CV, help with his cover letter. He takes no initiative to tailor his cv to a job and his cover letters are often last minute. I find his lack of resourcefulness so unattractive and fear the bad example for our kid. I’ve encouraged him to go to counselling. Suggested he retrain, looked up courses to help him. He is just so deflated/defeated/lethargic about it all. He’s not lazy. He buries his head in DIY - long, drawn, unproductive DIY. It’s killing our relationship.

I’ve thought a lot about leaving him lately. He seems so stuck. I just want him to go to a career magician who will tell him what to do and sort himself out.

Has anyone’s partner gone through this and come out the other side? How did you do it?
thanks for reading this far.

He applies for quite a lot of roles, all around the £35k mark (which is just not enough, but I don’t say this)

I find this comment really odd op. Why is £35k not enough? If you've managed for a year with zero then him getting just a £12k job would surely be a big help?

He needs to get a job - any job - to contribute and get himself back into it. If he thinks the kind of unskilled jobs anyone can walk into are beneath him them that's tough. Tell him to get himself to his nearest Amazon Warehouse. He's had long enough.

I think he needs tough love op.

He needs to see a dr and engage in therapy.

He's not even looking after the baby much.

The softly softly approach isn't working.

@Worriedbyname glad it helped a little; your post resonated as we have been in a similar position and thankfully have come out the other side. Feel free to pm me if it helps x

I was married to one of these. In the end I gave him an ultimatum- take a job - any job and start paying towards bills or go home to his mother (we didn't have kids though at this point)

@baileys6904 a lot of assumptions there. ‘Everything I did’? You mean help him, support him and birth a child, provide for us all? I’ve asked for help. Please don’t bother posting if you’re not going to do that.
@Lucious1000 thanks for the suggestion. Good on you. It is hard, but you’re doing it. Wishing you the best of luck.
@FawltyTower ive said in my original post that I haven’t been managing. I’m in debt from the past year. £35k is not enough to cover his commuting which is substantial when not remote working, loans, and home contributions.
@Ginmonkeyagain and @Milliondollars both really good shouts. Thank you.

Thanks to all for your helpful suggestions. I’m going to look into a prof career advisor/coach again today.

Just bear in mind that if he has been out of work for a while he may be better off with a 35k job just to get started & get the self confidence back. It will be a big leap for him & suspect he will find it quite daunting. It might be this which is causing the procrastination.

I know plenty of people that look happy but are absolutely miserable. Don't judge yourself by them.

You'd be very surprised.

Husband does need a little kick up the arse, a few home truths and as somebody else said a deadline.

It's still quite hard to get minimum wage jobs, but I do have to take hours that work for me being on my own.

What would he think of a British Gas electric meter installer. Had a guy do mine, seemed happy and I was looking into it after he left.

He may just need for now a career change. A stop gap, gets him out of the house, feels more useful and contributes.

Either way it is unsustainable and you can't keep carrying him and it's not fair either.

Op, you said I’ve paid our every bill alone for over a year now. It has min in debt - not a lot, but some.

So not a lot of debt is what I thought you said.

£35k might not be enough to give you the standard of living you want - but after a year of him having zero income, if you only have a small amount of debt then why wouldn't that be 'enough'?

Maybe heaping on pressure for him to get a high paying job isn't helping him either. If he'd got a job for £12k a year ago you'd be £12k less in debt now.

After a year (far less actually) I'd be telling dh to take what he could get, right now.

I wonder why he was managed out of one job and not kept on after the maternity leave ended.
He needs to see a counsellor / coach - could he be autistic ? I know everyone hates this type of suggestion but if he is unaware as to what he is doing wrong perhaps it is something like this.
Perhaps van driving would suit him -on his own following strict instructions - it would suit me nowadays as I could spend hours listening to podcasts/ audiobooks.

@FawltyTower I know what I wrote. Me accruing debt of any kind is not me ‘managing’ over the past year. I’m not going to go through our every bill with you. For reasons just explained the maths simply do not work for a £12k job.

No one is heaping on pressure on him for a high paid job either, I said in my original post that is a thought I keep it to myself. Not that £35k is high for his skill set, because it isn’t.

I came here for help, please don’t bother to post if you’re just here to criticise without even reading my post.

@SueDonnym i have thought about this actually. He is quite flustered with big changes. He does also seem to enjoy working alone now, but I’m not sure if that’s his disillusionment with colleagues or just preference. Defs worth exploring. Thank you

Actually, I think you've misunderstood my 'everything you did', that was probably the least negative bit of my post. I meant that perhaps it overwhelmed him rather than anything, and to be fair, it's a hard balance, especially when, as you say, you're carrying the can for everything.

I actually meant, perhaps he needs you to build him up and leave the constructive criticism to someone he works with or something like that. If he's depressed, anything you say even when delivered positively could sting, whereas from someone else, not so much. However as I said it depends on how much you want this to work.

He should however absolutely be doing everything to support you in the home, looking after baby etc, not leaving you to pay childcare.

And apologies if you took my reply to be an attack on you. It wasn't meant to be, more an observation that it may be too late

Sorry OP, but the chance that he is intelligent and that he somehow can't cope with Teams for remote working doesn't add up. There is a calendar on there that you can use to schedule meetings which is very easy to use. It means that you almost never have to manage your own diary, like in the olden days where people would have to check their diary at the beginning of the day and keep an eye on the clock a lot to make sure they didn't miss anything.

I'm so sorry you had to work right up to giving birth, that you had a difficult pregnancy and had to give up time with your baby. Awful. Time you'll never get back.

I stay up and find jobs for him to apply to. I revamp his CV, help with his cover letter. He takes no initiative to tailor his cv to a job and his cover letters are often last minute

He's massively failing as a father right now. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, you don't have a partner, you have an extra child, a young teenager you have to run after. I can't believe you're having to get involved in writing his cover letter and things like that. This leads me to think that either -

• He's not as intelligent as you think. Instead, he has a lot of accumulated, memorised knowledge (which is not the same as intelligence). The fact that he's well-read and maybe has some intellectual interests makes people think he's intelligent though.

or

• This is deliberate, basically weaponised incompetence. He's putting his feet up, just like he's done in previous jobs. He's assuming the role of a child in your relationship with you being co-opted into this against your wishes into being a mother for him. There are so many posts like this on Mumsnet from angry mothers who never forgive their partners for doing this to them. Their partners just don't care though. They just suck them dry until those poor women are often ill from the stress of it all.

I find his lack of resourcefulness so unattractive and fear the bad example for our kid. I’ve encouraged him to go to counselling. Suggested he retrain, looked up courses to help him. He is just so deflated/defeated/lethargic about it all. He’s not lazy

He has a bad attitude, and he's taking you for a ride.

That's hard, he sounds like an analog guy in a digital time.

If he refuses to have counselling for whatever issues (say, low self esteem/ anxiety?) get him to at least seek out a career coach who's also experienced in therapy/CBT. It sounds like you'll probably end up doing that for him but he should do it for himself. He'll need to be prepapred to listen to some robust feedback if they test his interview skills etc.

What are his skills, what is he good at?

Has he requested feedback for unsuccessful job applications?

I stay up and find jobs for him to apply to. I revamp his CV, help with his cover letter. He takes no initiative to tailor his cv to a job and his cover letters are often last minute

There's no point in doing this if he's not mentally able to apply himself to doing it himself or to progress it with intent. You might as well get your sleep. He's meant to be an adult and a partner, not another child. He has to come up with a plan himself, whether that's work or retraining.

Also OP, I wondering if he secretly likes this arrangement of him staying at home and you working full time, and that's why he just won't apply himself.

Jesus, what am I reading here?

Is he autistic? Is he depressed?? Does he need a career coach??? Ffs. He can't be bothered by the sounds of it.

How many years will the OP spend trying to answer those questions I wonder, making do with less, like so many mothers, because she ends up pathologising him.

Maybe, just maybe, he just doesn't like working very much. Fair enough, lots of people don't. Maybe he wants to be a stay at home Dad. That works for some people, but it should be a mutual decision. I'd say he's making sure the OP doesn't get any say at all the moment.

I have been in your shoes. It's really though. My husband went without any job for 5 years. Eventually he got a part time job for a minimum wage (used to be an IT project manager). It almost destroyed our marriage. It depends what you want in life. I earn 3 times as much as husband but we are happy together. It took the best part of 10 years to get there. My husband did accept counselling for depression and it really helped (He only went after a lot of persuasion for the sake of our child as we used to argue all the time). If your husband doesn't accept counselling I suggest you take up some counselling for yourself. You have a lot on your plate. It might also help you decide what your next steps should be. I also found a book "Why women talk and men walk " very useful

I wonder if a job, any job, would help in the short term. I realise you have outgoings that need covering but any job, even low paid at the moment, might help to build some self esteem and confidence - and provide more income than he's currently providing.
Failing that, I think some frank conversations are necessary and you both need to be willing to make some alterations to the current state of play - he needs to be more willing to seek some sort of help and you need to be willing to amend your expectations, discuss where you can make some cut backs or make money to further. These discussions also need you to air your feelings about being short changed on Mat leave because of his actions or that will fester as time goes on.
Ultimately I think you need to see whether he's willing to meet this as a team head on or how much you're willing to tolerate before saying enough is enough.

It's really hard when the rug is pulled from under you, through no fault of yours, so I hope you can find a route through it together but I do think you might need to prepare for him not being too willing to make any changes.

I agree, a frank conversation (without finger pointing or shouting) is warranted. I also agree you need to stop giving him job seeking help and advice. Once he decides to apply himself he will find a job, not necessarily the job of his dreams. I would say you need to decide for yourself what your boundaries are even if it's meant counselling for yourself. Be careful if you decide to apply for divorce. At the moment he is the primary caregiver so he might end up with more parental responsibilities if you go down that route. The current situation is not sustainable however you need to thread gently

I did an EdX couse online for about 900€ which allowed me to retrain as an instructional designer which I do remotely.

This might be a way forward.