Food, Home and Style

Love in the Time of Layoff: Helicopter Spouse

Earlier this week I received a comment that both touched and saddened me. Writes nelson46, in response to my recent posts on standing by my jobless man:

“Is my wife’s need to exclaim disdain (never ending) so immature? She says she has the right to make it known that I have not made enough money. I am self employed, a general contractor and have not had jobs like I used to. With the fear of having little money, and it’s happened before to me with the same response from her, I let her have her disdain. It grates me sometimes and we argue. Is she unlike those you know, and how did you decide [that] it [ie, a husband making less money] wasn’t disdainful?”

I looked up “disdain” in the dictionary and found this: “extreme contempt or disgust for something or somebody,” “to regard something or somebody as not worthy of respect.”

I feel little in the way of contempt for my underemployed husband. There have been times in my writerly life when I’ve been underemployed myself. So, were I to feel a lack of respect for Marco, I’d have to feel the same for myself. We have an egalitarian relationship.  If he’s earning less, it means I have to earn more. That’s the deal. But full disclosure: in our current situation, I hover.

Yes, I am a hoverer. Marco has been freelancing fulltime these past few weeks yet very much hoping to secure a more permanent job. He’s been working the double shift: a full day on site at the office followed by an evening of prepping his design portfolio from home. It’s not easy to do both, I know, and yet I find myself growing increasingly impatient. I miss that health insurance, not to mention the security of one of us being on a regular dole.

At first, my hovering was overt. No darkly disguised spycraft for me. The two of us would be home working on our respective laptops and from time to time I’d peer over at Marco’s screen to see iTunes.  Again.

“How’s it going over there?” I’d ask.

“Fine,” he’d say.  “I’m getting to it,” as he’d close out of iTunes and pull up an Illustrator file.

Marco admits to being a bit of a procrastinator sometimes, but really, the issue is this: An apartment the size of ours necessitates a certain amount of workspace clearing before one can get to work. For Marco, that means clearing headspace too, which translates: the man needs his tunes. I generally solve the problem by heading to Starbucks when the apartment walls close in.  I drink chai, he downloads.  In the heat of the moment, however, I tend to forget.

Being in a relationship with a job searcher can try one’s patience. Best to come to terms with the reality that there are different ways of getting that job done. Marco and I have different styles. And so, with that in mind, I’m putting myself in an anti-hovering program. Step 1: Admit my compulsion. Own it.

Last night, I came home from a visit to my accountant to find Marco sitting at the table with a slight hangdog look on his face.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“Nothing,” he says. “Why?”

“Something is off.”

“Man you’re good,” he says, then ‘fesses up. “I’ve been anticipating your coming home and asking what I’ve been doing and taking stock and it’s bumming me out.”

“Oh.” So much for the program. “I won’t ask, then.” Step 2: Make amends. “And I’m sorry,” I add.

“It’s ok.  I’m sorry for making you feel bad,” he says.

And there we were, caught in a web of I’m-sorrys. I wish Marco would finish his portfolio and send it out. I wish I could better curb my hovering. But for now, we’re just sorry—sorry to be in this situation, like so many now are, in the first place, and sorry to be at each other’s throats.

So in answer to nelson46, how do I avoid feeling disdain for my underemployed spouse?  I target my disdain at those who are responsible for this mess. I see my partner as the whole person that he is.  I see him in context. I make a little more room in my heart for him than there was before.

And I try, a little harder each day now, not to hover. Or at least not to hover so much. I never wanted to be a helicopter spouse. And I know Marco is trying his best.

Deborah Siegel is the author of Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild and creator of the group blog Girl w/Pen.

Tags: Love in the Time of Layoff, relationships