My [33F] husband [38M] wants to make a huge career change that can’t support and it’s causing resentment. How do we move forward?

Tl;dr - husband wants to follow passion/life long dream in a career that I can’t support due to the time and mental energy commitment it requires, among other reasons.

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My husband and I have been together for about 12 years, and we have a 2 year old together. Over the years, neither of us have been super passionate about our careers, but we’ve supported each other on trying new careers and side projects. However, the landscape has changed now that we have a child.

Husband just told me that he wants to leave corporate America and go back to school to become a high school phys Ed teacher, primarily to achieve his dream of coaching baseball. He’s been on various (unpaid, side-job) coaching positions in the past, but hasn’t been involved since the birth of our child. This was partially his own realization that the time and energy involved left too little left for family, and partially me expressing my frustration with the situation.

Naturally, my first reaction was to tell him that I’m concerned about the baseball aspect of this plan, because of the time commitment and the mental energy commitment. He has a tendency to put his passions ahead of his family, and has even struggled with jobs he isn’t passionate about. He’s just not super great at establishing a work-hobby-life balance that leaves room for the family unit.

Over the years, we’ve had various conversations about how I’ve felt like I’m always a second or third priority to him. Not only in actual hours spent together, but mentally and emotionally, if that makes sense. For example - if he’s out all day coaching, his natural inclination is not “I gotta hustle up so I can get home and spend time with the family!” It’s more like “They’re fine, I’ll stay a bit longer!”.

This mentality feels like “family will always be there so it’s fine if I don’t water the grass there”. It extends beyond scheduling commitments. I notice it with his siblings and parents as well - they’re disrespectful to each other, they don’t follow through on commitments to each other, etc. They just take for granted that they’ll always be there.

Like I said, in the past, I’ve supported him following his passion for coaching. But the game has changed now. I’m not going to support having to fight for his attention for our daughter. Ive never asked him to walk away from something he wanted to do until now, and I am sensing serious resentment and defensiveness coming from him. This is not a new conversation, but me saying no IS new.

At the same time, I feel resentful that I even have to have this conversation with him, and that that I’m put in the position of being the “bad guy” because he doesn’t agree with my reasoning.

I don’t even know where to go with this. It’s not like separating would even solve anything - that would just hurt our daughter more. I can’t think of a middle ground here that isn’t going to make him feel like he’s not being allowed to follow a life-long dream.

To add to this, we have been planning on starting a business together in about two years, and eventually retiring early in about 10 years. Which means that this change would also impact my career trajectory as well because I’d have to continue working far beyond what our original intention was. Ugh.

Submitted May 02, 2019 at 02:06PM by brightluz http://bit.ly/2Vyxhaz