A letter writer in this week’s Hax chat drove me absolutely bananas.
She writes that “our work is equally valuable” – but she doesn’t indicate that she understands the multiple Senses of the word “value.”
Not all work is Remunerative.
Not all work is Emotionally Fulfilling.
These two things are orthogonal to one another. A job that puts a roof over your family’s head is Valuable-like-Remunerative. A job or hobby that makes you happy is Valuable-like-Fulfilling.
The LW needs to understand that she has an obligation to ensure that her children do not go homeless. That doesn’t make her hobby work any less Fulfilling or whatever, but it does mean that the fact that her hobby work is not Remunerative is a HUGE FUCKING ISSUE.
Here’s the text. I’ll go get the full link in a bit.
The end of our beautiful work paradigm
Guest
12:55 p.m.
Dear Carolyn,
My husband and I have always had an understanding that our work is equally valuable, even though his work is more traditional and brings in consistent benefits/salary, while mine is a balance of occasional freelance work that pays and artistic passion projects that usually don’t pay (some years actually costs us money). Getting to the place where we are mutually respectful of each other’s work took years and some therapy to achieve, but until recently we are in agreement that I am just as entitled to dedicate energy to my work as he is to his. (This would come up, for example, in balancing childcare and housework responsibilities—I get equal time to work even if the money it brings in isn’t equal.)
The problem is that with the looming federal overhaul, my husband’s work is more important and more vulnerable than ever. We’re okay for now, but we had a Come to Jesus talk the other day where he suggested (and I agreed) that there may be a point where we have to live on savings. If that happens, he says, we will need to both prioritize paid work, and we will both have to do whatever is possible to keep him employed (even if it means I no longer get my equal time).
As much as I understand why this has to be, my whole soul jumps up in rage against it. Carving out my weekly work hours was such a hard-won victory and one I feel defensive of with everyone outside my home, and now I have to go back to fighting for it with my husband too? His answer to that is “But we have to pay the mortgage.” Yes, but this was a beautiful phase and I am so angry that it’s ending. Any advice?
Carolyn Hax
Advice Columnist
You’re entitled to your anger, certainly. But you’re not entitled to dump it on the wrong person just because this is your personal third rail.
If I read you correctly, any compression to your time window for your work — if it happens — will come from forces outside your marriage. So get angry at them, not your husband.
Then find some healthy outlet for your anger so it doesn’t harm you and your husband through corrosion — which isn’t overtly wrong the way blaming him for his job vulnerability would be, but is an insidious problem that’s within your power to address.
This is all “if”; maybe the chaos fairy leaves you alone.
But related to this: The hard work you did to create and defend this arrangement can make protecting it your emotional default even when your husband’s mental health is the valid priority. If you can’t trust him, yourself and the foundation of your arrangement — enough to leave it “unguarded” while you prioritize him through (literally) newsmaking stress and turmoil — then that could create much bigger problems than whether you preserve the structure of your deal.
A deal that, I do want to note, grants 50-50 value to each of your work when yours apparently gives you passion/soul satisfaction and his carries the family. Any soul/passion payoff in it for him? Okay for me to assume not?
Either way, just on the money front: While I cheer the idea of granting equal value to work for the sake of work and not just for what it pays, it does seem as if your husband took on extra mental load in this deal financially.
While you’re waiting to see what happens and still just talking about this, you can — calmly — make it clear that you want any adjustments to be responsive to the moment only and not a permanent ceding of ground that has been so meaningful to you. Or, if you trust him to knwo this already, say out loud that you trust him. But I would save all that for after you convey to him that you will, of course, not leave him to carry ALL the worries of how the family’s bills will get paid if the chaos fairy does visit him.
Right? You will, if it comes to that, do whatever your family needs?
Emilybook 