Partner Piles On after I Lose My Job

In this series, our Resident Sage responds to challenges readers are grappling with in their lives. All stories are anonymized for privacy.

My husband and I have two young children (ages 6 and 1.5 years old). We both work in high paying professional industries, but we live frugally because we both prioritize financial security over luxurious living.

Last week I was fired from my job; this was unexpected, though not a complete shock. Ever since I came back from maternity leave, I feel like my manager has put a target on my back. I know this is horrible, but this is not why I’m writing.

I’m writing because my husband has been giving me grief about being fired. He blamed me for taking seventeen weeks of maternity leave and said that this would not have happened if I’d only taken fifteen weeks, as he had suggested. I don’t understand why he thinks those two additional weeks would have made a difference.

Also, because of all of the antagonism at work, I have wanted to resign for some time, but he told me to stay put so that I could keep earning a paycheck. Being in such a hostile environment has caused me a ton of emotional distress since I never knew when I was going to face another attack from my manager.

Now that I’ve been fired, he is pressuring me to find another job right away. We don’t have an immediate need for my paycheck because we have money saved up for rainy days such as these. I really need a chance to regroup, to heal from the hostility I faced at work, and to figure out what my next steps should be.

On top of everything, our youngest child has just been diagnosed with developmental delays, and I want to be there for all of his therapy and doctors’ appointments. My husband lashed out at me that I was the one who asked for a second child, and now it’s possible that we may have to care for our child for the rest of his life, which he positioned as a financial drain. This is our child we are talking about!

I don’t even know where to begin a sensible conversation with him. His words and attitude towards me have been incredibly hurtful, but I don’t know how to move us towards a solution. He has talked with his mentor, and while he does calm down immediately after those conversations, he flares up again so the messages don’t seem to be sinking in. What should I do?

I am so sorry to hear everything that you’ve been going through – it’s a lot to deal with all at once. You and your husband were off to a good start: you began your married life with a common understanding that you both wanted financial stability and a family, and you decided to build a life together based on that shared vision. Somewhere along the line, though, your definitions of financial stability and how to raise a family seem to have diverged, and it’s all coming to light in this perfect storm of a situation.

Before you engage in any sort of conversation with your husband, first take some time to really reflect on how you feel; sometimes our bodies register our upset before we can fully articulate what we’re upset about, but it’s important to understand the problem in order to solve it. Some of my clients find it helpful to go through the list of Alarm Emotions to help them put a finger on which ones are blaring at them and why.

Two things will drive the conversation you will have with your husband: the problems you identify based on the alarm emotions you feel, and the specific actions you would like to see from each of you describing how to move forward. On both counts, he needs to understand how you feel and why.

Once you have a secure handle on how you feel, then you can open a dialogue with your husband. But this dialogue must begin with a focus on your feelings.

First, tell your husband that you need to take a break to recover from the toxic work environment you just left. It sounds like he doesn’t fully appreciate how abusive the workplace is if he blames your termination on your decision to take two additional weeks of maternity leave. By doing so, he’s condoning your employer’s unethical actions; women should not be forced to choose between their careers and caring for their newborns.

In a functioning relationship, you would expect your partner to stand by you and not by your attackers. By telling you that you behaved wrongly, he’s sending the message that you brought this on yourself, that you could have avoided the situation if only you had followed his advice.

If he says he was just trying to coach you on how to “win” against your boss, then he doesn’t realize how beat up and bloodied you became in battle. Yes, we all want to stand up to bullies or beat them at their own games, but bullies and abusers never play fair, so the game is rigged. No one can win against an abuser (more about this in a future post). When faced with such foes, the way to incur the least damage to yourself is to turn away from them and get outside of striking distance.

You were hurt by what happened at your workplace, and your husband inadvertently deepened your wound by telling you that you had to stay there instead of supporting your decision to leave when you wanted to. Instead of showing you empathy for your obvious suffering, he focused on the income your family would be missing out on. It’s important for him to know that you need compassion from him when you’re struggling with such massive stressors, not directions on what to do.

Next, tell him that you want to have time for your baby, particularly at this point when you are still trying to understand his medical condition. Wanting to care for your child’s needs is the most natural instinct for a mother, and since you have the means, tell your husband that you would like to take this time to care for your baby. This is totally consistent with your shared goal of raising a healthy, happy family. Remember, you decided to have this baby together – it was not a unilateral decision on your part! – so he also has to accept responsibility for making sure your baby gets the care he needs, no matter how long he needs it.

Finally, you need to bridge the gap between your different understandings of the family’s financial situation. Since functional confrontation is founded on the concept of specificity, first think about what financial stability specifically means to you. You mentioned that you don’t have an immediate need for your income because you’ve wisely saved money for a rainy day, but how much time do you feel like you can take without jeopardizing your feelings of stability? What else does financial stability mean to you? 

Then ask your husband specifically what financial stability and having a good life mean to him. Does it mean being able to support your current lifestyle for one year without either one of you having to work a day job? Does it mean never having to work a day job ever again? It’s possible that he began to envision a certain life for your family without checking whether you wanted the same things, and now you find yourself aiming for different targets.

Spouses have to understand what is going on in each other’s minds in order to maintain harmony in the marriage. Like dancing with a partner, it’s best when your moves are coordinated and you’re both in sync. When you notice a massive disconnect – like the one between your current financial circumstances and your husband’s urgent desire for you to return to work – you have to get to the bottom of the disconnect so that you don’t step on each other’s toes.

Your husband’s sense of urgency around you going back to work is a good clue that his Snake Brain has tripped an Alarm Emotion that he hasn’t yet turned off. When he talks to his mentor, he seems to be able to turn the alarm off temporarily, but my guess is that his mentor is not able to help him resolve the real problem because he gets upset again shortly afterwards.

Hoarding is a typical response to Worry (the Alarm Emotion associated with the Earth element), and one of the most common things people hoard when they’re worried is money. This is a good place to start looking for the root of your husband’s feelings. What is causing him to feel as if your family’s needs will not be met? Is there anything specific happening that would make him feel insecure about your financial situation, or is it more of a general anxiety? Help him be specific using questions like, “Can you help me understand why you feel that way?” Your questions should give him the space to see the incongruence between your financial situation and his desire for you to return to work urgently.

However, you’ll need to keep a look out for rationalizations such as “we’re heading into a depression, our situation is precarious because of the third child.” Rationalizations often turn to outward sources for validation rather than looking inward at how they feel. An honest expression of feelings sounds more like, “I’m afraid we are going to run out of money.” Then you can make a rational plan to address those feelings.

If something sounds logical but the underlying feelings have not been acknowledged, it’s probably a rationalization.

A word of caution: don’t be surprised if he becomes defensive when you tell him how you feel. If he tries to justify his words and actions, bring the focus back to you and your feelings. If he tries to minimize or negate your feelings (“You don’t have a right to feel like that”) – then appeal to his compassion. If he brings up his feelings, then give him a chance to explain why he feels that way and show him compassion; you should help him as much with his fears as he should help you with yours.

But if he becomes aggressive – even just verbally – then disengage. Have this conversation at a later time when level heads can prevail.

Your goal now is to come together with your husband and for you to recalibrate your expectations as a couple. One exercise that works well to make sure you understand each other is to use your own words to describe the other person’s feelings, and have them confirm whether you understand them correctly. Each specific thought or feeling you bring to the conversation is like another piece of the puzzle; the more pieces you have, the more obvious the actionable solution to your problems will become.

-E