I'm 33m, my wife is 31f. We've been together for 7 years, married for 4. No kids. I love her very much. The main issue is that my wife's job is terrible. She's salaried in the hospitality industry, so she works crazy crazy hours. 7 days a week is not at all unusual. Sometimes there are literal months at a time where she has no day off, I wish I was exaggerating. She is expected to work so much, and is given no recognition or appreciation for it. She is unable to really have any hobbies or anything like that outside of work due to how much she is forced to work.
She is salaried, which means that due to the USA's atrocious labor laws, they don't have to pay her overtime. So she makes the same amount of money no matter how much she works.
In addition to the insane amount of hours she is expected to put in, there is a lot of messed-up stuff that goes on at her workplace. Like hiring the owner's nephew and paying him 3x what my wife makes so he can yell at her, change all the office procedures that he knows nothing about, and do no other work. Also my wife is constantly threatened with termination for doing things that her supervisor told her to do. When asked, the supervisor then denies saying what he clearly said. Etc.
She's been job searching like crazy. She has had a couple interviews in the past few months, but no job offers.
I don't know how I can best help and support her as her husband. She gets home every day and tells me how awful her day was and cries on my shoulder. I feel so useless just responding with some variation on "I agree, your job sucks. Keep up the job search." I feel like a good supporting husband would be able do more to be really supportive. I do basically all the housework, because my wife has to work such crazy hours. I feel like this is the least I could do - make sure she always comes home to a clean house. Other than that, I have no clue how to help her. I can't make her current job better. I can't force other employers to hire her.
She often says she wants to just quit and figure out another job later. I agree that quitting her job sounds great, but unfortunately we are not independently wealthy. It would be very challenging for us to live off just my job alone. We both make decent money, but we live in an extremely high cost of living area. We could move somewhere with a cheaper cost of living, but then we would both have to quit our jobs. Then there is no guarantee that we would be able to find new jobs in the new area.
Because of this, she often uses the word "trapped" when we talk about this, which has stuck with me. She really is trapped. She can't quit and she can't find another job. So all she does is throw most of her life into this monster that is this current job, and I don't know how much longer this can go on.
I've lurked here and often posts come off like "Here are all the reasons I hate my husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend/etc." So I just want to reiterate that I love her so much, she's smart and very funny and quirky and her hair always smells good and I just want to help my my wife through this but I don't know how to help her. What should I do?
TL/DR: My wife's job works her half to death but she can't find another job and we can't afford for her to quit with nothing lined up and I don't know how to be a supportive husband.
Submitted December 21, 2019 at 07:52PM by throwway_04953 https://ift.tt/35MYyYr
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