Love in the Time of Layoff
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Love in the Time of Layoff: Coming Home Again
On Tuesday, my husband found out that his freelance work with the firm that picked him up three days after the Layoff is now drying up. Yesterday was his first day “back” at home.
“So, does this make you, like, laid off times two?” I asked in a lame appeal to mask my panic with humor.
“Nah, it’s much better,” he said. I asked him to explain.
Turns out, there are Layoffs and there are layoffs. Technically, of course, this latest downsizing of my beloved doesn’t count as a layoff at all, since Marco hadn’t been on staff at that firm. When his supervisor told him there was no more work for him right now, there was no sense of betrayal, no dark questioning (why me? why not him or her?), nothing personal. Other freelancers had been slowly disappearing. He knew things had been winding down.
Love in the Time of Layoff: A Security of Her Own
I’ve always harbored an entrepreneurial impulse. With Marco still freelancing a few months post-layoff, and with dreams of starting that family underway, I’m starting to plan. And plan big. The nester in me craves a far steadier financial environment in which to raise our imaginary kids. Sure, I wish financial stability would just drop in my lap, but that dream is about as realistic as the stork.
I’m starting to realize that, given our respective industries, if financial stability is going to happen any time soon, it might be up to me.
The entrepreneurial itch and I go way back. While still in graduate school in the late 1990s, I took a leave of absence and followed the siren call of the tech boom. I put dissertation writing on hold and went to work as a content strategist for a start up in Silicon Alley. While the start up tanked, it was a good effort. I learned much. I like to think of that period as this English major’s MBA.
Love in the Time of Layoff: Her Expendable Career
Those who read this column know that I’ve been writing very personally about how the downturn has affected my relationship. In all honesty, I’m starting to fear that by focusing on what’s happening inside relationships, we may be losing sight of larger contexts—what could and should be happening in the structures that govern our lives.
Whoever invented the notion that a wife who earns less than her husband has a career that is, by definition, “expendable”? The ubiquity of this sentence—“she has an expendable career”—was brought home to me once again when I read Diane Clehane’s “Recession Marriage Wars” in yesterday’s Daily Beast…
Love in the Time of Layoff: Of Uncertain Times
Last week marked the two-month anniversary since my dear husband got the axe. A lot can happen in two months’ time. We canceled a family pilgrimage to Puerto Rico and put the apartment up for sale. Marco quit the gym. Our cat died. We both have gained some weight, but other than that, we’re actually doing okay. Fat but happy, I like to say, with a roof over our heads (for now). We’ve got our love to keep us warm.
The other day, Marco came home from a day of freelancing feeling blue. I tried the usual—kissing it away—but no go. “You don’t like it when I’m moody,” he said. “I’m going to be moody sometimes.”
Love in the Time of Layoff: Learning from the Ladies
Four women, four generations, and four love relationships, each one affected differently by the downturn:
Gloria Feldt, age 67, decided with husband Alex to sell their apartment and stick to lowest risk investments despite low yields in order to protect their retirement.
Elizabeth Hines, age 33 and partnered with Jessica, watches her 8-month-pregnant belly rise as the Dow falls.
Courtney Martin, age 29 and living with longtime beau Nik, is already accustomed to income fluctuation. She freelances and has never had a “real” job.
And then there’s me: 40, married to my laid-off Marco, learning at midlife to weather an economic storm.
Biological Clocks Don’t Stop for Recession
When Marco got laid off in January, friends who knew of our family-launching plans asked us whether we’d continue or put things on hold. I just turned 40. Marco is seven years older than me. Our biological clocks are not in sync with the dipping of the Dow.
Sure, it occurred to us for half a second that this might not be the wisest time to be spending my grandmother’s inheritance on fertility treatments not covered by health insurance, but it’s expensive to adopt, too. And we really, really want a child.
Love in the Time of Layoff: A Gentle Response to Joe the Trader
In his post this week, Joe the Trader chronicles a meeting of the He-Man’s Unemployment Club. Roberto is the one who dumps the lunch he brings from home. Joe complains about picking up the iron and recycling the trash. Their girlfriends and wives, they say, spend too much on soy lattes and artisanal cheeses. I do love Joe’s humor—and I truly hope the gecko survives the downturn.
Yet like that New York Times article Joe gripes about, in which a stay-at-home Wall Street wife considers divorcing her unemployed husband because he can no longer deliver coin, Joe falls back on some too-easy stereotypes himself.
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?”
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…
Love in the Time of Layoff: Take This Heart and Shove It
It’s been a month since my husband Marco’s ex-firm broke up with him. And, like a romantic breakup, it takes time to heal—for us both.
I was on the road to such healing, eating ice cream in the middle of the day, when the doorbell rang. I finished a work call and opened the door. It was…
Love in the Time of Layoff: Two’s a Crowd
Last month, I was part of a dynamic duo excited about the prospect of upgrading to a two-bedroom apartment in Park Slope or Hudson Heights where I could have a little more space in which to write and we could start our family. But now, with my husband Marco newly laid off, I’m insta-primary breadwinner.
And here’s the thing. I am a card-carrying, credentialed feminist. I’m equipped to earn, and I do. So it freaks me out, a little, that I’m so freaked out about this sudden shift in our roles.
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