I [46M] feel like I am missing out on life because I spend all my time at work paying for stuff I'm hardly ever home to enjoy. Yet my wife [48F] and children [17F, 15F, 13M] constantly require things that cost money, creating a neverending cycle. How do I avoid a burnout, without nuking the family?

Hi Reddit,

I've been married almost twenty years. I am a lawyer, and work really long days. I get up around five in the morning, commute for an hour to my downtown office, work at least ten hours (starting long before my office even opens in the morning) and more usually twelve, and stagger into my house at seven thirty or eight o'clock at night. This continues the whole week, then on weekends, my wife usually has something social and expensive planned (like attending the opera or something like that), or else I am committed to attending various activities for my kids, such as violin recitals, etc.

Well, honestly Reddit, I've never liked being a lawyer. In fact, from day one, I've hated it. I come from a very conservative household and in that culture it was expected that I could be either a doctor, a lawyer, or something else that would be very profitable monetarily. Even my second-choice dream, being a university professor for history, would be looked down on in my family because it wouldn't earn the nearly two million dollar salary I currently earn every year. My dad was a brain surgeon, my grandfather the owner of a chain of successful stores. You get the idea.

I don't personally get to enjoy the money. It does bring me happiness to see that it brings happiness to my family, but I still feel like I'm missing out.

My wife is not the type who works, either outside or inside the home. We have a maid, a cook, and hire people to do the landscaping. Our kids attend private school. My oldest daughter is about to graduate school this year and will be attending college. Her grades aren't good enough to earn a scholarship, so this is going to be expensive as hell. My wife is the sort who goes to lunch with her friends every day and shops and buys art and asks for my opinion on where she can hang it when I get home, then ignores my opinion and hangs it where she originally planned.

I'm not complaining. It is what it is, and I got myself into this.

I know that my life probably isn't going to change until maybe at least the youngest is out of college. For what it's worth, despite my long schedule, the wife and I have a regular, active sex life and other than the stereotypical henpeck stuff that a rich Jewish wife will do to her husband, we're happy.

But I just don't want to be a lawyer anymore.

I've always wanted to be a chef. Not even a chef in a fancy restaurant. Just a restaurant chef.

One of my few real pleasures is being home on weekends, knowing the cook only works weekdays, and watch my kids get all happy because "Oh, father is going to cook us breakfast." When I'm in the kitchen, I feel like for the only time in my life, I'm doing work I enjoy.

Measuring out portions, working the stove, coordinating my timing for all the ingredients, presenting the plates like a work of art, it's AMAZING.

I do not enjoy being a lawyer because I'm always assigned cases where I need to defend assholes who I know are guilty as fuck, but I know how to win and get them out of trouble.

I hate it.

At the same time, I know that trying to be a chef and following my stupid dream will not bring in the money I need to support my family the way they need to be supported.

Don't let the big salary fool you. My family and I found a way to ensure that we are in LOTS of debt. In that sense, we're no different than families that make it work on 40k a year.

Any advice on what I can do here to avoid going crazy?

I HATE going to my office. I want to cook, or teach German in a high school, write a book, actually live. I don't want to wait until I'm a broken down old man.

I look at myself in the mirror and I don't feel old. I feel like I still have it in me to do other things with my life. I'm in the office all day but I never got fat. I'm still lean and strong. I want something else out of this life.

At the same time, I love my family and want to do right by them.

I've hinted to the wife that I don't want to be a lawyer until I'm super old; that maybe after the kids are grown

I'd like to do something else. She laughed and assumed I was joking.

A part of me is terrified that my whole family will dump me if we can't be rich.

Sorry. I know this is a stupid first world White guy problem.

I've actually fantasized committing suicide more than once, but the thought of my children being ashamed of me or suffering or starving stops me.

Thanks for any advice Reddit.

**tl;dr: I'm a lawyer. Don't want to be one anymore. I want to be a chef. How do I break the news to my family, who are used to being rich?**

Submitted July 27, 2018 at 09:27PM by StovepipeCap https://ift.tt/2AixrJu