Wife [21f] asks me for advice about why she isn't doing better in her career. I [23m] try to give her some honest feedback and she feels like I'm attacking her. Can I break this cycle?

I just had another scene with the wife that has repeated itsself a handful of times throughout our year of marriage.

My wife is 100% excellent as a wife. She is kind and loving and full of affection and I am grateful every day that she married me a year ago.

But my wife is also.......maybe not that great of an employee. It pains me a bit to say that, because I love her dearly and want her to do well in life, but it is the objective truth.

Periodically she will have some issue at work; passed over for a promotion, written up, trouble with the boss. She comes to me, because I'm doing reasonably well in my career, and asks why things aren't going as well for her.

And I try to give her an honest answer. "Well, babe, you kind of call out a lot." It happens once every couple weeks or so. I get home from my job and find her already there, she tells me she called out that day. And when I point that out to her she responds "Well I was stressed/feeling sick/didn't get any sleep the night before/whatever" and looks at me like that is a legit answer, and I try to tell her "Y'know they probably don't care about any of that. They probably only care that you call out multiple times a month." And she throws her hands up and feels like I'm calling her a bad stylist, which I'm not. But the best stylist in the world would probably get in trouble over that kind of thing.

Likewise every couple weeks she'll tell me about some argument she is having with her boss. And when it comes up I point out that she seems to have a lot of arguments at work. She tells me it is boss's fault for XYZ. And I just tell her that it doesn't really matter who starts what, you usually lose if you get into a fight with your boss. She gets huffy and walks away.

And then she periodically gets moody that I'm doing okay at work while her career is stagnating. She asks me what she is doing wrong and I point out the above, and she gets huffy and her feelings are hurt. Usually involving throwing her hands up and saying something like "I guess I'm just the worst stylist ever!"

I know this post probably makes her seem not great, but she really is a great partner outside of that. I make enough at my job that we don't really have to rely on her continued employment, so I usually just consider her job habits to be her business until she specifically asks me.

But then she asks me and gets hurt at the response. And it's especially frustrating because she really is a good stylist from what I've seen, she just isn't that great at the non-artistical parts of having an artsy job.

How can I break out of this cycle with her? I'm not gonna lie to her and tell her she is doing great when she asks, but I'm getting tired of being the bad guy when I give her some real talk when she asks me why she isn't doing well.

Help?

TL;DR Wife is a great wife, but not a great employee. She gets hurt when she asks why she isn't doing well at work and I'm honest with her. How do I break the circle?

Submitted May 27, 2019 at 05:43PM by Dangerous_Employment http://bit.ly/2JL2mSz