Originally Posted by Monahammer
My mental health is waning lately. A couple of big things happening in my life right now:
- The association I work for just had a major member execute their withdrawal agreement. It has a 2 year unwind, but it's creating substantial stress in the office and ruining the good vibe we had going on. Also, it feels like we are being caught in a sort of personal disagreement rather than it being related to our performance, so a bit of a slap in the face.
- My wife has (almost unilaterally...) decided she is going back to school for her masters in fall. I say almost unilaterally because she didn't pitch it to me until she had already been accepted to the program. This one is effecting me a lot. I urged her to complete her masters right after she finished her Bach. Her mom was offering to pay for some at the time, and we were in a good place overall for that to occur. At the time, I had already started working and was providing for us- but it was just us. That situation was too much for her though, and so she started front-line crisis work as a social worker. She made it 3 years doing that before we got married. Our original plan (again, pre discussed...) was to wait a few years post marriage to have kids. I was informed on our wedding night that she was going off BC, and to deal with the outcomes myself if I didn't want us to get pregnant. Well, honeymoons are basically impossible to do that with IMO.
We had our first child about 10 months post wedding. I love him to death and wouldn't change a thing. But I did get out of her about 1/2 through mat leave that the real motivation was so that she wouldn't have to keep being a frontline worker. COVID happened during this time, and she went back to work for a very small interval between mat leaves for our second child. Whom I love and wouldn't trade for the world.
During this time, her work accommodated her desires and created a new position (essentially, HR) hiring and training new frontline staff. She lasted about 4 months doing this after mat leave 2. This all happened in the context of my business failing and me looking for my current job, too. She came to me and told me that she had worked out with a psychologist friend (someone who had completed the masters program that she declined) to work for her practice, managing the day to day ops, hiring, and administration. I asked her if she was sure- it's kind of a limit career wise, though interesting. She sold me on the opportunity by discussing how she would only really be busy with it the first 2 years or so, and then it would transition to her managing a team and being available to the kids before and after school etc. This was all confirmed by her colleague.
Now, here we are 2 years later. She tells me she's unhappy with this choice and can't imagine doing this for 20 more years. I understand that, but I am at a loss. How can I be confident that she won't just hate being a therapist after getting her masters? What about our plan for the kids?!
I can't tell her this... she told me when she was already excited, already invested. She deserves to be happy, and is mostly wonderful to me and the kids... but I can't help feeling like this is wildly selfish. I will be bearing all of our living expenses for the next 2 years while she goes to school, will be bearing the debt payments until she graduates, and no doubt will be the lead on childcare as she completes school work...
I don't know how to escape the resentment I am already feeling about this.
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