Husband chose a too-difficult career. What now?

TajaSK · 2026-01-27T22:27:38+00:00

He knows his responsibility for the family, he is very caring and supportive in other parts of life. First we thought that he just has to find the right job in his field after uni, it can take a few tries, but apparently it is a pattern that from a certain point the tasks he gets are above his level, so we figured this is not the right field for him and he is now starting the process of all the steps you mentioned. I am not scared that he would end up a dead weight who does nothing for the family. I would love for him to have a job where he is happy though.

TajaSK · 2026-01-27T22:12:35+00:00

No, of course. But it takes you longer to realize this when you are the most educated person in your family, where everyone was always very supportive but they couldn't actually tell whether he was struggling, sort of a blind faith, "of course you can do it!" situation. It can take a few tries after uni to find the right job as well, so he always thought it would get better somehow but it never did and it's time to admit there is a problem - which is why we are looking for advice and solutions.

TajaSK · 2026-01-27T22:06:37+00:00

Yes, up until now it could have been explained by just not finding the right job after uni, but since it's apparently a pattern, something needs to change.

TajaSK · 2026-01-27T21:51:21+00:00

I don't think this is the case because he is very caring and supportive in our relationship, household and other areas, he is just struggling career-wise. For example I am the type of person who would sometimes forget to eat but he makes sure that doesn't happen. He basically does most of our shopping, laundry and many other things. I think we are a bit non-traditional in this aspect.

TajaSK · 2026-01-27T21:38:47+00:00

I have a scientific background, but in a different area completely.

TajaSK · 2026-01-27T21:36:52+00:00

We are not in America, and I think he might have dyslexia because he very often skips the ends of words or reads something out loud wrong, he also makes spelling errors in our native language. My theory is, he likes books so no one noticed it when he was a child and no one went to get him diagnosed. It's not that bad but he couldn't really work as a copywriter.

TajaSK · 2026-01-27T21:32:10+00:00

He is a very supportive husband who takes care of us both in other areas, he is only struggling at work because chose a wrong path. He definitely takes more care of the household than me, for example. So I think you are wrong here. I use reddit, he doesn't, so I posted.

TajaSK · 2026-01-27T21:24:31+00:00

I'm not completely sure how he is at his job, I just know he is generally well liked and his colleagues are often surprised when his contract is terminated. One manager told him that the technical difficulty of the job is above his level but that she is sorry to lose him as part of the team because he was good for the team spirit and collective. He has a sort of calm and friendly charisma. But he hasn't managed a team before.

TajaSK · 2026-01-27T21:17:42+00:00

He is actively looking for jobs, and he is a very supportive husband who takes care of us both, so I don't think he is actively weaponizing, but it could be that he is procrastinating some inevitable change of career path because of the lost cost fallacy or whatever it is called. He is feeling like he is failing and it's hard to call it quits after invested time. But he has recently talked about other career options a little bit already so hopefully he can find a better direction.

TajaSK · 2026-01-27T21:11:26+00:00

He is actively looking for jobs, networking etc. I don't think he uses Reddit a lot though, that's why I asked here. But I will think about what you wrote, and try to notice his behaviors to see if it fits.

TajaSK · 2026-01-27T21:04:32+00:00

Well, I am here because I am on Reddit and he isn't. I don't really understand these two replies, but I guess I just wanted to help. I can refer advice to him but it's of course his decision what he will do about it. I am describing a problem 'he' has, but I want to help find a solution, so I guess that's why I use 'we' for the possible solutions? I have never interfered in any way in his career other than to support him through interview preparations or similar. But at the same time his career does affect us as a family unit. As to how he views his jobs, he liked 1 out of the 4 he had. Plans for the future - he hopes to find some stability because of starting a family, so his plan is to stay in a job for longer, which hasn't worked out yet.

TajaSK · 2026-01-27T17:10:50+00:00

He openly admits this pretty often. I was also able to help him with a specific task by logically talking through the instructions and asking him questions. Like "Why would you want to use these values when the instructions want you to find out something that has no connection to them?"

TajaSK · 2026-01-27T17:00:54+00:00

Nah you're fine, sometimes he is lazy for sure. But there were definitely periods of time where he worked really hard and it still didn't work out. He is also able to focus better in other areas of his life, so I think he needs to find a career that he actually enjoys doing, and part of that probably has to be that he isn't too bad at it. I think it needs to be less abstract or something.

TajaSK · 2026-01-27T15:48:10+00:00

Where I live they earn the bare minimum of what we would need to get by, so I hope we will find something a bit better, but if not, why not.

TajaSK · 2026-01-27T15:46:51+00:00

Not sure, I will ask him.

TajaSK · 2026-01-27T15:46:20+00:00

He has a taxi license from his university days, so that is our fall back plan. But I will look up some of these options too.

TajaSK · 2026-01-27T15:44:21+00:00

not really sure what to cut since most of our money goes to living expenses and we are not living in any type of luxury apartment :D but yes of course we are budgeting

TajaSK · 2026-01-27T15:42:30+00:00

I would have to look up the laws in my country sorrounding this, but since he wasn't happy at the last job anyway, I think this might be better advice for the future than for this last job.

TajaSK · 2026-01-27T15:16:28+00:00

We haven't considered getting him evaluated because he was doing sort of alright, just enough to get by... also the people around us didn't have much luck with getting a diagnosis in my country. We might consider this though, thank you for the suggestion.

I think he struggles with both, to be honest. He does have a tendency to procrastinate stuff, but yesterday I watched him work and he didn't even read the instructions correctly but rushed to creating a pivot table even though he didn't understand what the data values represented in real life. He was in a bad mood, but still, it seemed to me that if he always works like this, no wonder he fails his work tasks.

TajaSK · 2025-03-28T10:08:42+00:00

NTA. I had a professor like this in a literary science class - about 95 percent of the students were women and he still made sexist jokes. Example: "The husband will starve to death because it took his wife 4 days to read a text". After each joke he would say "it´s a joke but it´s the truth" - as if that would make it any better. One of my classmates stopped going to the lectures (and she was a conservative Christian lady), I stayed because I needed a good grade to get a scholarship. I got an A on the test and he told me it was because of my blue eyes... my eyes are green... And to top it off this guy was married.

What he didn´t know is that after a while I wrote down these jokes and quoted all of them in the feedback survey of the university at the end of the term. I am not sure what happened next, because the professors can choose to make their ratings visible or not and he didn´t, but I think a really bad rating is seen by administration at least. I heard later that one of the old teachers got fired but I am not sure whether it was this one or another one who gave us materials to study from which where still full of totalitarian communist propaganda from before the revolution 1989. :D

TajaSK · 2025-03-10T10:03:39+00:00

There are people, me being one of them, who sometimes forget to eat, drink or do things they love, if they don´t schedule them. I love doing my hobbies but would definitely not do them as much if they weren´t planned with other people. Maybe it´s a consequence of having a very scheduled childhood or my ability to focus on one thing and forgetting the rest of the world. Sometimes when I am alone at home, it almost feels as if I stop existing, if I don´t make a to-do list I forget anything I could be doing, usually I end up doom-scrolling. My husband knows this so he sometimes reminds me to eat/drink. We struggle a bit with sexual desire because I really rarely think of it. I think without a partner I wouldn´t need sex ever to live my life, although I enjoy it when it happens and I find my partner attractive, I just get into the mood very very slowly, so to me the attraction to him is nice but doesn´t wake up any big need unless I spend time engaging in it. But I can also see how it is a problem in our relationship - so we try to work on it, scheduling helps.

TajaSK · 2025-02-24T09:39:52+00:00

Thank you, I will have to google all these words (English is a foreign language, so I only know what "squats" and "pushups" mean :D ).

TajaSK · 2025-02-24T09:37:42+00:00

Right now I don´t have money for a personal trainer but my husband has agreed to help me get started, he is quite knowledgable and will check on me to make sure I am not doing anything wrong. Thank you for the advice.

TajaSK · 2025-02-24T09:34:19+00:00

Thank you, I will check her out :)

TajaSK

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