Stress in the Spouse of the Unemployed

I met her at a cocktail party and quickly learned her husband had been laid off. Embarrassed, she broke into tears. She had heard that I was a career coach and wanted to know if I could help her husband. Holding what was a napkin to dab her eyes she exclaimed, "Will he be alright? When will he find work? I don't know how to support him through this. He's been out of work for months."

I think we become so focused on the person who has suffered the job loss that we forget the family as a whole. Spouses, and wives in particular, feel deeply when her mate loses a job. She doesn't know how to 'fix' him and feels abandoned at times while he leaves the room to figure out his future. What is misunderstood is that he needs to do this.

A man has to gather his strength in order to come back to he relationship, and I'd venture to guess that this pattern started in the cave man days. Life was simple. There weren't SUV's and American Express Cards. It was simply the notion to go out, kill and eat it. End of story. The females role was to take care of the cave and the children. Together they formed a valuable team and created their survival.

Life isn't that easy any more. We are all competing to get our needs met and our feelings validated. A job loss can signify the end of a life style. Or, it can mean the beginning of true partnership.

Be gentle with each other.

He will find work. Your lives will go on. This is a small blip on the radar screen that hardly amounts to anything of magnitude, although it feels like that today.

Let him gather his strength. Let him re-create who he is so he can move forward.

Don't ask him when you come home from work if he found a job.

You'll be the first to know.

And when you do that, he feels failure and it starts an endless cycle that is hard to break.

Be kind to one another.

This too shall pass....