Disagreements are common, but when your spouse starts to look down upon something, it is time to have a discussion. A similar case happened with her.
A Redditor took to the forum and asked, “Am I wrong for taking a particular job even though my husband disapproves?”
Backstory:
The Original Poster (OP) is a 25 years old female who has been married to her husband for 2 years. When they married, they moved to a different city for his job, and he is a software engineer.
In the new city, OP quickly found an entry-level job in the field she thought she wanted to work in, i.e., publishing. However, she did not like it. She hated office politics, long hours with relatively low pay, and found the work monotonous.
OP stuck it out for a year and a half to avoid being a job-hopper and to see if she could make it work. As she saw nothing was improving, she started applying to various other jobs.
After many failed attempts, she interviewed for an executive assistant job that she liked. The job was a great fit at every step.
The OP clicked with the executive, and the staff seemed supportive. Besides this, she saw it as a stable job, and there were no signs of layoffs like many companies were going through.
The pay was great too. It was 50% more than her current job, making it $75,000 from $50,000 with good benefits (for example, OP would have more vacation time, robust insurance with lower cost, etc.)
Besides this, the new job would also be strictly 40 hours a week (with occasional paid overtime) as opposed to her current publishing job, which often required 10+ hour days and doesn’t pay overtime.
What Happened Next?
When OP discussed it with her husband, he told her that although it was her career, he disagreed with this move.
He said that OP would get stuck in the secretarial pool, which was not a “professional job” appropriate for their life plan. He also said that he would be embarrassed by her and think less of her if she took up this job.
For those of you who are wondering what the job contains, let us make that clear. The job was to be an executive assistant to the CEO of a marketing agency. It was nothing illegal or horrible. There was definitely a path forward; if she did well, she would have an opportunity to be in account coordination or management.
OP told him that she was miserable in her current job, needed a change, had a reasonable offer, and was going to take it.
Besides this, she clarified that she would make more money for fewer hours, so she was not taking anything away from him or their household. So she accepted it, and then he told her that OP was a jerk and barely spoke to her.
OP asks, “Is she wrong for taking a job against her husband’s will?”
What Do We Think?
Redditors say she is not wrong. “If you have a job and make more money than you were, what’s the problem? I could see if you were taking a big pay cut, maybe. Also, a surprising amount of upward mobility comes with being an executive assistant. Your husband definitely is, but you are not wrong.” said one.
Was OP correct to take up the job? Was it inappropriate for OP’s husband to react the way he did? How would you have reacted in this situation?
This article originally appeared on Mrs. Daaku Studio.