Reply to Wife resents me for not earning more

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP again.

I should have mentioned that we don’t live in DC anymore - moved for her job. Still in another major east coast city. That complicates her ability to just dive back into Uncle Sam, and to some extent makes my lateral moving ability more complicated, but it’s not a deal breaker. I am currently gaining the management and financial chops to become competitive for SES and fin reg, but that will take a couple of years of expertise building and networking. My point was that my earnings ceiling has not been reached. My agency in particular is not DC-centric and won’t block advancement opps just because I am not at HQ.

I realize the root of our problem is in many years of bad financial decisions, a hole that we are just now digging out of. Another part of my resentment is that my wife’s lifestyle desires drive a lot of our stress — they’re not mine. She won’t compromise on the caliber of preschool we put our kids in, insists on organic milk every time, only gets excited by homes that around $1M in cost (in the good school, good commute neighborhoods in our city). So just to be clear, the lifestyle creep is not being driven by me. She needs to sort out of what she wants in life, and not live in eternal bitterness and anger at me for not being able to rescue her. But I understand her resentment at its core and a lot of the above comments make sense.

The resentment has ebbs and flows. When her work is manageable, we chug along ok.  But she’s in fire drill land, I become the proxy emotional target for all the things in life she’s frustrated about.[/quote]

Your wife sounds like an extremely unhappy person and you need to sort out (together or separately) what you want, otherwise the resentment will only get worse and worse.

I still don't see why you feel like you need to make biglaw money to live a good life. There is no reason why you cannot afford a 1M home on two GS-15 salaries or even slightly less than that if you prioritize.[/quote]

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