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Saving a Marriage after Job Loss

Amanda Petersen* was living the good life in suburban Detroit. The 40-year-old mother of two was the family breadwinner. A senior executive in a real estate development firm, Petersen’s $200K job paid a generous bonus, offered stock options and a profit-sharing plan. It meant private school for the kids and enabled her to go on special trips with her husband, a firefighter, throw parties, and lavish gifts on family and friends. Laid off last spring, Petersen felt clobbered.

While lucky enough to find a job last summer as the administrator of a non-profit organization, Petersen earns only a third of what she was making, which promptly put an end to getaways, beach houses, holiday gifts and her twice annual parties: “We would have pulled the kids out of private school if we hadn’t paid the tuition for the full year in advance.”

Sound familiar? Families like Petersen’s are grappling with similar challenges in the new economic order as one or both high-income earning spouses lose their jobs in layoffs and cutbacks. Accustomed to a certain standard of living, couples like the Petersens who have experienced job losses often suffer relationship strains as existing marital tensions are exacerbated and financial stresses spark new challenges. In high-income earning families, status-oriented activities like vacations, parties and charitable giving are pared, if not cut altogether.

“If there are already money stresses in the marriage, this is the time to resolve those issues. It almost forces the hand of the couple to solve them,” says Dr. Nancy Mramor, a Pittsburgh, Pa.-based health psychologist who works couples where one or both partners has suffered a job loss.

Ironically, while the Petersens, married nine years, have dipped into their savings to cover regular expenses and tuition, they hadn’t faced a financial issue until recently.

“My husband deals with it a ton better than I do,” Amanda says. “I’ve had a very strong vision of the way I wanted our family to live… We spent without thinking and a lot of the tensions released on our marriage came from me being able to afford certain things… Now we don’t have that kind of stuff.” …

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–Written by Tobi Elkin for YourTango.com

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Tags: relationships, YourTango