Made a bad decision about going back to work and regretting it.
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Anonymous
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You described my life except I have no choice and have never had a choice.
If you and your DH are set for retirement, I would quit. |
Anonymous
Not Op, but I'm a longtime SAHM with HS and college age kids, too. I've been thinking about returning to work myself but haven't applied anywhere. I'm curious to know how long it took for you to find a job, how many places you applied to and how many interviews you went on before you were offered a job. Also, what did you put on your resume? I'm sort of at a loss as to what I would put down. I've done volunteer work over the years but I haven't done any work for pay nor have I taken any classes to update my skills. I would love to know what you did to make yourself marketable. Congratulations on your job! |
Anonymous
Sounds like she knew someone and job just fell in her lap |
Anonymous
Absolutely! If it wasn’t clear in my post - I meant she should stay in her job until she finds another one. (Maybe give yourself a year to find something new before you quit.) |
Anonymous
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OP, I am in the "stay for a year, give it a chance" camp. Your first OP paragraph describes me, BTW. I admire you. Ignore the haters. |
Anonymous
Woe is me posts by people who have been essentially retired for a decade have hard time garnering sympathy |
Anonymous
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OP here. Thanks to everyone who responded. I appreciate all of you, because your plain speaking, thoughtful, strategic, BTDT and don't-give-a-damn-about-OP's-first-world-problem perspectives was what I needed today. DCUM came through for me on this one!
Finances - - We are OK. Not super wealthy, but comfortably UMC. Retirement and college is squared away. DH's job is secure and we are also heavily insured. No prenup, solid marriage, low overheads, joint everything. (IRA from the years I have worked, and my own modest inheritance has remained in my own name for years). DH's motivation - - Since, I am highly educated and walked away from my job for my family, he wants me to fulfill any dreams that I may have put aside. He is extremely supportive and has done everything to make this easier for me. Money is not the objective for him. If I want to paint for leisure, he is happy for me. I think, what he wants to avoid dealing with is me curling into a ball and bawling when the kids leave. Kids motivation - - They are super responsible and troopers. They want me to do this if I LOVE it. They have assured me that they will manage and have taken over a whole lot of stuff in my absence during the summer break. We will see how it works during school year. I suspect they will need me more. They are ok with whatever I choose - work, volunteer or just stay at home. My motivation - Unfortunately, I am being motivated by negative feelings that has come from my own thought process, and not from any external source. - Sadness - All my kids will leave home at the same time. Can I find something to fulfill me similarly? - Apprehension - Can I get a job at my age? Can I earn a living? No one is going to hire a SAHM who has been home for so many years. - Internal bullying - Everyone makes sacrifices to work. Why should I be the special snowflake who is spared? - Shame - People are unemployed and I am rejecting a job that fell in my lap. What if I had no choice and had to be the breadwinner? - Greed - What if this job becomes something more? It could fill in the gaps in my resume. - Fear - If I leave, people will think I could not hack it in real world. My challenges at work stem from multiple things happening at the same time, as posters have pointed out - - New job. It takes many months to stop feeling uninformed. The workday is challenging also because I am on high alert all the time and trying to figure things out. - Lack of practice. Yup, many years of not working in the corporate world is kicking my butt. It is a huge change for me. - Playing catch-up. With technology, acronyms, and being in a completely new industry that is technical and my past experience does not match up with it in any shape or form. - Hours. This is more than a full time job. This is not what I envisioned. The work does not end at the office. It has taken over my weekends. - Commute. I am not doing well at all with this. I have already worked remotely some days and what it has translated to is me working longer hours from home. I have started putting in 10 hours at home without moving from my desk to catch up. No wonder they love me! Why this job is wrong for me - - Mental toll. I hate that so much of my mind space is being occupied by this job. It was not meant to take over my life. - Physical toll. My self-care has deteriorated significantly. I am exhausted. - Toll on the family, on home. I am wracked with guilt that my home, kids, garden, charity, relationships and mom are being neglected. I have spent years tending to them and I am letting it all slip away at the crucial last years. - Nature of work - Nothing about the work I am doing is interesting, familiar or worthwhile. It is stressful and completely uninspiring. I did not lie in the resume. I told them that I have not worked for x years. They must have been desperate and no one wanted to do this work. They have hobbled together several jobs that no one was doing/wanted and made it into one. - Office environment - It is pretty much an isolating job. I do not have the time to meet people. People are not impolite or unfriendly. The feedback I have been given through another person is that they like me a lot!  I really wonder why? They are perfectly fine people and perfectly polite. I just do not have much interaction with them.
Bottom-line - I was very happy being the caretaker to my family. I still have this role for the next 4 years. After that, I want a job/occupation/charity/hobby that can give me similar levels of fulfillment. This job is not it. I will send in my notice and resignation letter this week. I will complete the assigned tasks and that will be it for me. Using different voices, I have read your valuable replies aloud to my family today. They crack up when I use the exasperated voice and read "OMG, JUST Q-U-I-T", and they become very quite when they hear different POVs from both SAHMs and WOHMs. Your voices are actually the voices that have been in my head for some time now. I know what I gain and lose in both roles - SAHM or WOHM - because there are trade-offs in any role. No option gives you all that you want. We are blessed to be financially secure, so I am going to start from that. Health needs to be prioritized, because kids are not settled yet, and DH is not yet retired. I need to start the job search when I am mentally ready to do so, and do something that I enjoy. I liked the idea of another pp, about looking into part time positions with organizations I volunteer with. I can absolutely monetize it if I need to. Thank you for that. To all the women out there - WOHMs and SAHMs - thank you! You have taken the time to respond to my vent and it has helped me a lot. |
Anonymous
This. I have to go back to work at the same age because we don't have enough for retirement. It is what it is, it's not for fulfillment. Quit if you can OP. |
Anonymous
Seriously why would anyone work if you don’t have to. Your DH clearly enjoys the breadwinner mantle and that role it gives him. It sounds like the slog of a career job doesn’t fit your phase of life, so enjoy the good life you have been given. |
Anonymous
If something happens to her DH, Op would be left with no income and very little employment history, no health insurance. She would have no credit, she wouldn't be able to get a loan. Simply renting an apartment would be difficult for her. Luckily, Op and her husband have life insurance and a nice financial cushion which would, hopefully, be more than adequate to sustain her while she looks for a job. But she almost certainly would need a job for the health insurance alone. I'm in a similar position as Op. I've been a SAHM for a long time, I don't really need work but with my youngest heading off to college in the next couple of years, going back to work is definitely on the table for me. |
Anonymous
QUIT. Life is too short to be miserable. Your worth as a person is not based on if you WOH or not. You still have done valuable work. QUIT on Monday. |
Anonymous
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Hi OP, this has been been a very interesting thread to read. I'm glad you started it (and have a healthy relationship with it!).
I initially was in the OMG Q-U-I-T camp. Life is too short to be that miserable if you don't need it. I think shifted into the, well, stick it out for a year and see what happens as you adjust, start looking for something else after a year. But after reading more, and your update, I'm back to Q-U-I-T. You've already been out of the workforce- you won't even put this on your resume. It's just a blip. A nice (or not so nice!) interlude that gave you valuable info on your priorities and what's important to you. As money isn't really an issue (even if god forbid something did happen to DH), I think you are ideally suited to explore typically lower paying, more meaningful work in the non profit world. If you're already volunteering a lot, finding part time work in those fields, where you have a passion, could be your goal. You don't have ot be the exec director of a non profit. You can be a valuable, paid contributor in an area that brings you joy. Yes, you're in a great position, and yes, lots of other people aren't. That's ok. That's the way life works. These passion projects of yours could help other people plenty, while giving you more structure and employment. |
Anonymous
Op tell us more about this job you have? How did u get it? Is it likely the only corporate job u can jump to or do you have more leads? |
Anonymous
It sounds as though you have weighed all the pros and cons of quitting vs staying and sticking it out and you have reached an informed decision. Nothing is more important than your physical and mental health. It's wonderful that you have such a supportive family and I can totally see how PT work with one of the organizations that you volunteer with could be the ideal solution for you. I hope you find something that you love and look forward to doing every day. |
Anonymous
Op here. I hear you. You raise extremely valid arguments. I am a firm believer in women being financially independent and secure for themselves and their children. DH and I, didn't have a great financial start to our married life. For years, we lived paychecks to paychecks and very frugally. That being said, when my DH became a high earner, it was a stroke of luck that he was at the right place, at the right time. When your prosperity is due to luck, you don't take financial well-being for granted. When I left my own job, financial insecurity of earlier years, drove me to insist that we become heavily insured. My staying home with kids was something that both of us wanted, but, I was not going to quit my job just because we could afford it at the moment. Being poor is not a good place to be and I had lived most of my life being low on funds. I wanted to make sure that my family was looked after and I did not have to go back to work under any circumstance for financial reasons. I had read many years ago that divorced/widowed women and their children, were at a high risk of poverty and that made a huge impact on me. |