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Dear Sugar, "How the Real Work Is Done"
Found here.
Dear Sugar,
I am newly civilly unioned. I love my spouse (wife?) dearly, though we have our issues. What appears to me to be our biggest problem—the one that keeps me up some nights—is that she won’t get a job.
We’re a quite poor couple in our mid-twenties, both in school. We’ve been together for four years, and in that time my girl has had three jobs: one she was laid off from because the job ended, one she quit, and one she was fired from. All these jobs lasted fewer than six months.
She’s made halfhearted attempts to placate me in the year and a half she’s been unemployed. Mostly though? We fight, she cries, she shuts down, she lies and says she’s been trying to find a job, even though I know she hasn’t. She has moderate social anxiety issues and says she can’t work any jobs involving other people because of it. She doesn’t even offer up excuses for not applying to any number of other jobs I’ve suggested (throwing newspapers! work-study in a low-traffic area of her school! selling her lovely quirky crafts online! dishwashing!). At one point, she suggested that she would rather donate plasma every week than get a job.
Sugar, I’m a full-time student working two jobs. We’re barely getting by on what I’m bringing in. We frequently must rely on my parents for money, and they’re rapidly losing their ability to keep up with my financial needs in addition to their own. I worry so much about this. I worry that my partner will never be motivated enough to hold a job. I worry about what her job prospects are going to be when she reaches thirty in a few years without ever actually having held a long-term job. I worry that, though she sees my struggles, she will never feel guilty enough to get things kicked into gear.
What can I possibly do to get her to take job searching seriously? She’s emotionally fragile, due to years of social anxiety, sexual and emotional abuse from her father, and a recurring eating disorder. Because of that, I don’t want to threaten her with any ultimatums, because I wouldn’t mean any of them and I fear it would do more harm than good. My girl’s got a good heart, but she is so afraid of failure that she willfully ignores how much I sacrifice to keep our rent paid. I love her, and she loves me, yet I feel I’m without a partner in this. I don’t know what to do next. Please help.
Working for Two
***
Dear Sugar,
My husband makes me laugh every day, EVERY day, multiple times. He’s been my best friend for years and is still my favorite person in the world. He’s enriched my life in so many innumerable ways and he has told me that I have reciprocated that enrichment. I do love him so. SO. And I am quite certain he loves me.
The issue is that he’s been unemployed for over three years. He did try to find a job for a while (and I believe he still occasionally does), but now I think he feels unqualified for anything other than the job he used to hate and also that he has no reason to be hired for anything else. Inertia has taken him over. He wants to write, but feels unworthy, so he doesn’t write. He is brilliant and funny and erudite, but he sees none of that. He doesn’t paint/sculpt/whatever might give him fulfillment or do anything that would move him forward in his life. I would be happy with him doing anything (and I truly mean that), yet he seems to be stuck. He’s also bipolar and self-hating and all of that.
Fortunately, my job carries us financially, but only barely. The house is clean, the laundry is done, the dog is walked, but in three years he hasn’t been able to figure out a way to financially contribute to our household. He’s stressed out about the fact that we have trouble paying our bills, but he does nothing (truly nothing) to change it. If I had plenty of money, I’d be fine with this, but I don’t. I’ve been carrying this load alone for a long time. I have repeatedly tried to talk to him about this, to no avail.
I love him so much and I’m so sad about this. I think my staying with him may be ruining both our lives. Perhaps my support is keeping him from fulfilling his dreams. What do you think, Sugar?
Responsible One
***
Dear Women,
As I’m sure you both know, there is nothing inherently wrong with a spouse who makes no money. The most common scenario in which it makes sense for one spouse to earn an income while the other does not is when the couple has a child or children who must be cared for, which goes along with a domestic life that requires constant vigilance of the cleaning, shopping, cooking, washing, folding, tidying up, taking-the-cat-to-the-vet-and-the-kids-to-the-dentist variety. In this situation and others like it, the “non-working” spouse is often doing more work, hour for hour, than the “working” spouse and though on paper it appears that the one with the job is making a greater financial contribution to the household than the one who “stays at home,” if you ran the numbers and figured out what it would cost to employ someone to do the work of the “non-working” spouse, it becomes apparent that one should probably shut their big trap when it comes to who is contributing what.
There are other reasons, usually more fleeting, that one spouse may not be earning money in any given period: if he or she is unemployed or seriously ill or attending school full-time or caring for an infirm or dying parent or working in a field in which the money comes only after an extended period of what may or may not turn out to be unpaid labor.
Neither of you appears to be in any of those circumstances. While it’s technically true that both of your spouses are unemployed, it seems clear that something more complex is at play here. Your spouse, Working for Two, has such a spotty and brief record of employment that unemployment is her customary mode rather than a temporary state of affairs. Your spouse, Responsible One, has apparently drifted into a post-unemployment funk and has given up the search for a job. You both feel overly burdened and seriously bummed out. You’re both desperate for change. You’ve both shared your feelings with your partners and been met with compassionate indifference (ie. I feel terrible, sweetie, but I’m not going to do a damn thing about it).
What a mess.
I hope it’s not going to be news to you when I say you can’t make your partners get jobs. Or at least you can’t make them get jobs by doing what you’ve done so far—appealing to their better nature regarding what’s fair and reasonable, imploring them to act out of their concern for you and your wishes, as well as your collective financial well-being. Whatever dark angst is keeping your spouses from taking responsibility for their lives—depression, anxiety, a loss of self-confidence, a fear-based desire to maintain the status quo—it’s got a greater hold on them than any angry fits you’ve pitched about being the only one bringing in any dough.
It’s a truism of transformation that if we want things to be different we have to change ourselves. I think both of you are going to have to take this to heart the way anyone who has ever changed anything about their lives has had to take it to heart: by making it not just a nice thing we say, but a hard thing we do. Your spouses may or may not decide to get jobs in response to your changes, but that is out of your control.
The way I see it, there are two paths out of your misery. They are:
a) Accept the fact that your partner won’t get a job (or even seriously delve into the reasons he/she won’t seek one) or
b) Decide your partner’s refusal to contribute financially is unacceptable and end the relationship (or at least break it off until circumstances change).
So let’s say you went with option a. Both of you express love and adoration for your partners. You don’t want to lose them. How might you accept your dead-beat darlings for who they are at this era of their lives? Is this possible? Is what they give you worth the burden they place upon you? Are you willing to shelf your frustrations about your partner’s fiscal failings for a period of time? If so, how long? Can you imagine feeling okay with being the sole employed member of your union a year from now? Three years? Ten? Might you together agree to downsize and reduce expenses so that your single income becomes more feasible? What if you rethought the whole thing? What if instead of lamenting the fact that your partner is unemployed, the two of you embraced it as a choice you made together? Reframing it as a mutually-agreed upon decision, in which you are the breadwinners and your partners are the significantly supportive, non-incoming-earning helpmates, would give you a sense of agency that’s lacking now.
Working for Two, you don’t mention if your partner does more than her share around the house, but Responsible One, you state that “the house is clean, the laundry is done, the dog is walked.” That’s something. In fact, it’s quite a lot. It’s not money, but your husband is positively contributing to your lives by seeing to those things. Oodles of people with jobs would be deeply pleased to return to a clean house that doesn’t contain mountains of dirty laundry and a dog demanding to go out. Many people pay people to do those things for them or they return from work only to have to work another, domestic shift. Your husband’s unpaid work benefits you. With that in mind, what other ways could your partners lighten your burden if they refuse to lighten it financially? Might you draw up a list of your household and individual needs—financial, logistical, domestic, and administrative—and divide the responsibilities in a manner that feels equitable, in terms of overall workload, that takes your job into account?
While I encourage you to sincerely consider coming to peace with your spouses’ perpetual unemployment, I’ll admit I’m presenting this option with more optimism than I feel. One thing I noted about both of your letters is that—while money is a major stress point—what worries you most deeply isn’t money. It’s how apathetic your partners are, how indifferent they are to their ambitions, whether they be income-earning or not. It would be one thing if you partners were these happy, fulfilled people who simply believed their best contribution to your coupledom would be as homemakers and personal assistants, but it seems clear that your partners have used home and the security of your relationships as a place to retreat and wallow, to sink into rather than rise out of their insecurities and doubts.
So let’s talk about option b. Working for Two, you say that you won’t give your partner an ultimatum, but I encourage you to rethink that. Perhaps it will help if you come to see what I see so clearly now: that you and Responsible One are the ones who’ve been given ultimatums, at least of an unstated, passive aggressive sort.
Ultimatums have negative connotations for many because they’re often used by bullies and abusers, who tend to be comfortable pushing their partners’ backs against a wall, demanding him or her to choose this or that, all or nothing. But when used by emotionally healthy people with good intentions, ultimatums offer a respectful and loving way though an impasse that will sooner or later destroy a relationship on its own anyway. Besides, the two of you have been up against the wall for years now, forced by your partners to be the sole financial providers, even when you have repeatedly stated that you do not and cannot continue to be. You’ve continued. Your partners have made their excuses and allowed you to do what you said you don’t want to do, even though they know it makes you profoundly unhappy.
Your ultimatum is simple. It’s fair. And it’s stating your own intentions, not what you hope theirs will be. It’s: I won’t live like this anymore. I won’t carry our financial burdens beyond my desires or capabilities. I won’t enable your inertia. I won’t, even though I love you. I won’t, because I love you. Because doing so is ruining us.
Don’t you get a little bit lighter inside just reading those lines?
The difficult part is, of course, what to do in the wake of those words, but you don’t have to know exactly what it will be right away. Maybe it will be breaking up. Maybe it will be mapping out a course of action that will save your relationships. Maybe it will be the thing that finally forces your partners to change. Whatever it is, I strongly advise you both to seek answers to the deeper questions underlying your conflicts with your partners while you figure it out. Your joint and individual issues run deeper than someone not having a job.
You can do this. I know you can. It’s how the real work is done. We can all have a better life if we make one.
Yours,
Sugar
Dear Sugar,
I am newly civilly unioned. I love my spouse (wife?) dearly, though we have our issues. What appears to me to be our biggest problem—the one that keeps me up some nights—is that she won’t get a job.
We’re a quite poor couple in our mid-twenties, both in school. We’ve been together for four years, and in that time my girl has had three jobs: one she was laid off from because the job ended, one she quit, and one she was fired from. All these jobs lasted fewer than six months.
She’s made halfhearted attempts to placate me in the year and a half she’s been unemployed. Mostly though? We fight, she cries, she shuts down, she lies and says she’s been trying to find a job, even though I know she hasn’t. She has moderate social anxiety issues and says she can’t work any jobs involving other people because of it. She doesn’t even offer up excuses for not applying to any number of other jobs I’ve suggested (throwing newspapers! work-study in a low-traffic area of her school! selling her lovely quirky crafts online! dishwashing!). At one point, she suggested that she would rather donate plasma every week than get a job.
Sugar, I’m a full-time student working two jobs. We’re barely getting by on what I’m bringing in. We frequently must rely on my parents for money, and they’re rapidly losing their ability to keep up with my financial needs in addition to their own. I worry so much about this. I worry that my partner will never be motivated enough to hold a job. I worry about what her job prospects are going to be when she reaches thirty in a few years without ever actually having held a long-term job. I worry that, though she sees my struggles, she will never feel guilty enough to get things kicked into gear.
What can I possibly do to get her to take job searching seriously? She’s emotionally fragile, due to years of social anxiety, sexual and emotional abuse from her father, and a recurring eating disorder. Because of that, I don’t want to threaten her with any ultimatums, because I wouldn’t mean any of them and I fear it would do more harm than good. My girl’s got a good heart, but she is so afraid of failure that she willfully ignores how much I sacrifice to keep our rent paid. I love her, and she loves me, yet I feel I’m without a partner in this. I don’t know what to do next. Please help.
Working for Two
***
Dear Sugar,
My husband makes me laugh every day, EVERY day, multiple times. He’s been my best friend for years and is still my favorite person in the world. He’s enriched my life in so many innumerable ways and he has told me that I have reciprocated that enrichment. I do love him so. SO. And I am quite certain he loves me.
The issue is that he’s been unemployed for over three years. He did try to find a job for a while (and I believe he still occasionally does), but now I think he feels unqualified for anything other than the job he used to hate and also that he has no reason to be hired for anything else. Inertia has taken him over. He wants to write, but feels unworthy, so he doesn’t write. He is brilliant and funny and erudite, but he sees none of that. He doesn’t paint/sculpt/whatever might give him fulfillment or do anything that would move him forward in his life. I would be happy with him doing anything (and I truly mean that), yet he seems to be stuck. He’s also bipolar and self-hating and all of that.
Fortunately, my job carries us financially, but only barely. The house is clean, the laundry is done, the dog is walked, but in three years he hasn’t been able to figure out a way to financially contribute to our household. He’s stressed out about the fact that we have trouble paying our bills, but he does nothing (truly nothing) to change it. If I had plenty of money, I’d be fine with this, but I don’t. I’ve been carrying this load alone for a long time. I have repeatedly tried to talk to him about this, to no avail.
I love him so much and I’m so sad about this. I think my staying with him may be ruining both our lives. Perhaps my support is keeping him from fulfilling his dreams. What do you think, Sugar?
Responsible One
***
Dear Women,
As I’m sure you both know, there is nothing inherently wrong with a spouse who makes no money. The most common scenario in which it makes sense for one spouse to earn an income while the other does not is when the couple has a child or children who must be cared for, which goes along with a domestic life that requires constant vigilance of the cleaning, shopping, cooking, washing, folding, tidying up, taking-the-cat-to-the-vet-and-the-kids-to-the-dentist variety. In this situation and others like it, the “non-working” spouse is often doing more work, hour for hour, than the “working” spouse and though on paper it appears that the one with the job is making a greater financial contribution to the household than the one who “stays at home,” if you ran the numbers and figured out what it would cost to employ someone to do the work of the “non-working” spouse, it becomes apparent that one should probably shut their big trap when it comes to who is contributing what.
There are other reasons, usually more fleeting, that one spouse may not be earning money in any given period: if he or she is unemployed or seriously ill or attending school full-time or caring for an infirm or dying parent or working in a field in which the money comes only after an extended period of what may or may not turn out to be unpaid labor.
Neither of you appears to be in any of those circumstances. While it’s technically true that both of your spouses are unemployed, it seems clear that something more complex is at play here. Your spouse, Working for Two, has such a spotty and brief record of employment that unemployment is her customary mode rather than a temporary state of affairs. Your spouse, Responsible One, has apparently drifted into a post-unemployment funk and has given up the search for a job. You both feel overly burdened and seriously bummed out. You’re both desperate for change. You’ve both shared your feelings with your partners and been met with compassionate indifference (ie. I feel terrible, sweetie, but I’m not going to do a damn thing about it).
What a mess.
I hope it’s not going to be news to you when I say you can’t make your partners get jobs. Or at least you can’t make them get jobs by doing what you’ve done so far—appealing to their better nature regarding what’s fair and reasonable, imploring them to act out of their concern for you and your wishes, as well as your collective financial well-being. Whatever dark angst is keeping your spouses from taking responsibility for their lives—depression, anxiety, a loss of self-confidence, a fear-based desire to maintain the status quo—it’s got a greater hold on them than any angry fits you’ve pitched about being the only one bringing in any dough.
It’s a truism of transformation that if we want things to be different we have to change ourselves. I think both of you are going to have to take this to heart the way anyone who has ever changed anything about their lives has had to take it to heart: by making it not just a nice thing we say, but a hard thing we do. Your spouses may or may not decide to get jobs in response to your changes, but that is out of your control.
The way I see it, there are two paths out of your misery. They are:
a) Accept the fact that your partner won’t get a job (or even seriously delve into the reasons he/she won’t seek one) or
b) Decide your partner’s refusal to contribute financially is unacceptable and end the relationship (or at least break it off until circumstances change).
So let’s say you went with option a. Both of you express love and adoration for your partners. You don’t want to lose them. How might you accept your dead-beat darlings for who they are at this era of their lives? Is this possible? Is what they give you worth the burden they place upon you? Are you willing to shelf your frustrations about your partner’s fiscal failings for a period of time? If so, how long? Can you imagine feeling okay with being the sole employed member of your union a year from now? Three years? Ten? Might you together agree to downsize and reduce expenses so that your single income becomes more feasible? What if you rethought the whole thing? What if instead of lamenting the fact that your partner is unemployed, the two of you embraced it as a choice you made together? Reframing it as a mutually-agreed upon decision, in which you are the breadwinners and your partners are the significantly supportive, non-incoming-earning helpmates, would give you a sense of agency that’s lacking now.
Working for Two, you don’t mention if your partner does more than her share around the house, but Responsible One, you state that “the house is clean, the laundry is done, the dog is walked.” That’s something. In fact, it’s quite a lot. It’s not money, but your husband is positively contributing to your lives by seeing to those things. Oodles of people with jobs would be deeply pleased to return to a clean house that doesn’t contain mountains of dirty laundry and a dog demanding to go out. Many people pay people to do those things for them or they return from work only to have to work another, domestic shift. Your husband’s unpaid work benefits you. With that in mind, what other ways could your partners lighten your burden if they refuse to lighten it financially? Might you draw up a list of your household and individual needs—financial, logistical, domestic, and administrative—and divide the responsibilities in a manner that feels equitable, in terms of overall workload, that takes your job into account?
While I encourage you to sincerely consider coming to peace with your spouses’ perpetual unemployment, I’ll admit I’m presenting this option with more optimism than I feel. One thing I noted about both of your letters is that—while money is a major stress point—what worries you most deeply isn’t money. It’s how apathetic your partners are, how indifferent they are to their ambitions, whether they be income-earning or not. It would be one thing if you partners were these happy, fulfilled people who simply believed their best contribution to your coupledom would be as homemakers and personal assistants, but it seems clear that your partners have used home and the security of your relationships as a place to retreat and wallow, to sink into rather than rise out of their insecurities and doubts.
So let’s talk about option b. Working for Two, you say that you won’t give your partner an ultimatum, but I encourage you to rethink that. Perhaps it will help if you come to see what I see so clearly now: that you and Responsible One are the ones who’ve been given ultimatums, at least of an unstated, passive aggressive sort.
Ultimatums have negative connotations for many because they’re often used by bullies and abusers, who tend to be comfortable pushing their partners’ backs against a wall, demanding him or her to choose this or that, all or nothing. But when used by emotionally healthy people with good intentions, ultimatums offer a respectful and loving way though an impasse that will sooner or later destroy a relationship on its own anyway. Besides, the two of you have been up against the wall for years now, forced by your partners to be the sole financial providers, even when you have repeatedly stated that you do not and cannot continue to be. You’ve continued. Your partners have made their excuses and allowed you to do what you said you don’t want to do, even though they know it makes you profoundly unhappy.
Your ultimatum is simple. It’s fair. And it’s stating your own intentions, not what you hope theirs will be. It’s: I won’t live like this anymore. I won’t carry our financial burdens beyond my desires or capabilities. I won’t enable your inertia. I won’t, even though I love you. I won’t, because I love you. Because doing so is ruining us.
Don’t you get a little bit lighter inside just reading those lines?
The difficult part is, of course, what to do in the wake of those words, but you don’t have to know exactly what it will be right away. Maybe it will be breaking up. Maybe it will be mapping out a course of action that will save your relationships. Maybe it will be the thing that finally forces your partners to change. Whatever it is, I strongly advise you both to seek answers to the deeper questions underlying your conflicts with your partners while you figure it out. Your joint and individual issues run deeper than someone not having a job.
You can do this. I know you can. It’s how the real work is done. We can all have a better life if we make one.
Yours,
Sugar
no subject
I definitely like some of her observations:
(as one possibility to be discussed) "What if instead of lamenting the fact that your partner is unemployed, the two of you embraced it as a choice you made together?"
"One thing I noted about both of your letters is that—while money is a major stress point—what worries you most deeply isn’t money. It’s how apathetic your partners are, how indifferent they are to their ambitions, whether they be income-earning or not."
But I'm not sure about her conclusion -- that the letter writers should give their partners some sort of ultimatum. I can see this being a way for the letter writers to clarify how they feel, but what will it do the partners?
And, perhaps the two partners' mental illnesses are more relevant than suggested?
no subject
no subject
And also? Housekeeping is financial contribution. It's a substantial one. I feel like Sugar gives lip-service to the idea but fails to follow that through.
I think Sugar's point about inertia is very important, and am kind of disappointed that she didn't talk about its source (which seems likely to be mental or physical illness; people generally like to do things). I don't think that an ultimatum per se is a bad idea -- just the one she gave is useless, and flat-out telling them to "get a job" would be worse. Sugar notes that you can't make someone get a job, but doesn't seem to realize that it's not just a matter of will or desire or luck in the economy; the partner of the first letter writer in particular sounds as if she doesn't know the skills for holding a job. They're usually just socialized and most people don't seem to realized that they are learned skills. (Ask me about the internship in college where I didn't know that I was supposed to or how to track my time. Or other jobs where I drifted out or got fired for just not knowing how jobs worked. I eventually picked them up, but it took a while, and I still do a lot of stuff consciously that a lot of people do automatically.)
I'd probably recommend urging/helping/insisting the partners to work on the inertia issue, whatever its cause, and leaving out financial outcomes altogether. The partners could be doing things like therapy, getting a checkup to rule out physical causes, volunteering, writing, exercising, etc. (All of these can be done without adding to the financial burden; the first partner in particular has school resources.) Whether or not that should be an ultimatum kind of depends on how much they've already done about that. If the partner has been refusing to work on their mental health issues for a long time, then an ultimatum might be the kindest thing; on the other hand, if the only discussion has been about the job thing, then allowing time to switch tracks seems important.
no subject
I think you're absolutely right that "'I can't take it any more' is not an ultimatum." Ultimatums (ultimata?) have to have a rigid structure and a lot of specificity, like a contract, or they'll fall apart.
You're also so right about needing skills for holding a job. Every so often I have a moment of awe and terror in which I remember that four years ago I would absolutely not have been able to sustain the office job I have now.
I really wish Sugar had given the advice in your last paragraph. I'd like to see if she has anything useful to say about how to be the letter-writing partner in that situation -- how to encourage a partner to break inertia without acting in co-dependent ways.
no subject
But...that seems a lot more like the real problem here than not wanting to work. And she ought to at least have shoved the discussion over there, even if those questions are really kind of unanswerable, rather than leaving it with the financial red herring. Which isn't to say that the finances aren't a real problem; just that they seem to me to be a symptom, not a cause.
Let's say that either of those partners win a lottery and get a reasonable yearly income as annuity -- not one of those billion-dollar jackpots, just a nice middle-class income -- but nothing else changes in what they do each day. Do you think either of the letter writers would be happy? I don't (though I think the first one would be justifiably very relieved for a while).
no subject
How much *can* they do?
When I was suffering badly from depression, my partner never expected me to work full time. On the other hand, he never offered to support me fully either. And just because I couldn't find a job didn't make me unable to work. I temped; I did short contracts.
Often I needed breaks between temp assignments (temping is horrible work, too) -- I'd have a week or so off, recovering before I got more work.
And I'd tell the temp agencies the number of hours per week I felt able to do. It meant I didn't always get the best jobs, but it also meant I was getting some sort of work, at least.
Honestly, it was pretty awful, when I compare it with the permanent job I am in now.
However, it was the hours I was able to do, and it kept me in money.
Some people can't work at all. In my country, these people are supposed to be able to get a sickness benefit from the government. I don't know what one does if things don't work that way. It sounds awful.
I think a key thing both letter-writers could do is to draw a clear distinction between living expenses and pin-money. If someone who is able to work isn't choosing to, I don't see much reason to give them access to all my money.
I think my advice would be to explain to the partner that one didn't feel OK with giving them personal cash, when one thought they could earn their own. Obviously, one would need to talk about it, but I think it's not unreasonable to suggest setting up the joint finances so that bills will be paid, but discretionary income is all in the earner's hands. At the same time, I'd offer to help the person find a part-time role that would at least earn them some pocket money.
In the case of the second letter, I think I'd also take a good look at the household tasks. If the non-earning partner is doing more than half of these, I'd look at it as a financial contribution and discuss whether that earnt some discretionary income or only counted against rent and bills.
I think the couple would need to talk together about what is fair, and that this will probably vary for each couple.
no subject
That seems like a pretty good, concrete bit of advice once they're figured out whether the partner of the first letter-writer really could be working.
no subject
I really dislike the fact that she's trying to guilt her wife into getting a job. Especially because this:
She’s emotionally fragile, due to years of social anxiety, sexual and emotional abuse from her father, and a recurring eating disorder.
makes it clear that there's a lot more going on here than the wife just not caring enough.
no subject
I worry that the balance of power in this sort of situation can easily turn into abuse.
The letter-writers have more power that their partners in that they are financially supporting them, and, I think, also in that they feel responsible and confident about their own actions and contributions to their relationships and living arrangements. Meanwhile, their partners have a lot of reasons to feel vulnerable.
A person in that situation can easily feel that they are responsible for their partner's behavior, in charge of getting them to change. And the means for doing that -- or at least for feeling that they are accomplishing something in that direction -- could so easily be abusive.
no subject
Guilting her partner is awful, but it sounds like anyone in her situation would be at the end of their tether, and...well, even Sugar is giving shitty advice, and I consider her one of the best advice columnists out there. She's not likely to be getting much in the way of useful support. :(
no subject
no subject
The more I think of it, the more irritating and shallow and wrong I find Sugar's advice, particularly to the first letter writer (the second letter isn't so nearly full of red flags, to my mind). Some of her commenters are calling her on it, but not enough, I don't think. I'm really disappointed, because she also wrote this, which is just amazing, and so much other good stuff.
no subject
He’s also bipolar and self-hating and all of that.
These are the things I hone in on immediately, and I think they are way, way more central than either the letter-writers or Sugar seem to see. They are serious trauma-issues/mental illnesses, and are significant factors in whether someone is literally capable of job-searching, job-interviewing and (most importantly) holding down a job.
Obviously, one cannot tell from a letter how much of a factor they are, because the letter just off-handedly mentions the issue at all. But if I were to answer the letters with advice, my very first bit would be: address this. Talk about this, see what resources you can find about this, think hard about whether either of these partners should be applying for (for instance) disability, or whether a change in (or, you know, establishment of) mental health care details/routine would make a difference.
I do think Sugar is right to some extent in that, at some point, you have to figure out if the relationships can continue/is worth continuing and in what circumstances (financial, emotional, etc). It's a bad job market: the partners may not be able to get jobs even if they try really, really hard. The letter-writers need to figure out if their situation is at all financially tenable if that's the case, etc, etc, etc. Particularly in the case of the first letter-writer, she needs to decide where her line in the sand is in case her partner is not capable of "getting better" at this (or refuses to). I think even when in love (perhaps especially when in love), you have to figure out where your boundaries and lines are, and you have to take responsibility/the power to establish them.
Personally, I see way more red flags in the first letter than in the second one. The second one, I do agree with Sugar that the letter-writer needs to think hard about her husband's contributions to the household (as far as I can tell, he's actually being a pretty good house-spouse which is WORK, and especially if they can think of a few more ways he can take some of the post-work load off her shoulders - learning the complicated arts of super-thrifty shopping, whatever - I think they may be better off); the first one . . . .ai.
Personally, I think that whether or not you call it an ultimatum, both letter writers really do need to sit down with their partners and have an honest (preferrably calm and non-judgemental) conversation about the basic realities of the situation, each side's concerns and problems, anybody's ideas for solutions, etc. And by non-judgemental, I would personally mean opening the floor to, say, the first letter-writer's partner saying "I can't get a newspaper job because it requires me to talk to the people who give newspaper jobs and the idea makes me want to run away and hide in a dark hole until I starve to death" - social anxiety: can be seriously a big impairment.
Those are my slightly disorganized thoughts, anyway.
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Thank you very much. I think this is just right, and that the first letter-writer needs to be considering her partner's mental health more than she seems to do in the letter.
I would have liked to see Sugar write about getting to a non-judgmental position as you mention. I think by the time someone has written to an advice column they are pretty emotionally fraught about the issue and it may be difficult to be calm and self-possessed enough to do this.
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To be fair, part of the reason I think letter writer #1 needs to be thinking about the mental health issue is that it may be an impassable barrier to what she wants, and if she really can't deal with a partner whose difficulties make it impossible for her to work, well . . . =\ I mean, from the sound of it, letter writer #1 has a LOT on her shoulders. I feel for her. It just feels like the crux of the problem, the thing that determines whether it can be solved, may be deeply rooted in mental illness/lack-of-health issues, and sometimes, those just don't go away.
I think by the time someone has written to an advice column they are pretty emotionally fraught about the issue and it may be difficult to be calm and self-possessed enough to do this.
Definitely. I just know that a lot of the time, conversations like this can go off the rails right at the beginning by one party perceiving the other as judgemental or accusatory; better to sit down and say, okay, look: this is what I perceive as happening. This is what it's doing to me. This is what I can and cannot handle.
And then one shuts up, and listens to the other side, and then try to work out where to make them meet. And, you know - sometimes, there is no meeting possible. =\ But a lot of the time there is, if only one can figure out how to talk with sensible words, instead of hurling shouting aimed to hurt at one another.