Poor guy!! OP is insufferable. Nothing more off-putting than people who are preoccupied with social status. So empty.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DH is a great guy but he’s kind of a lightweight. He has a funny job that people make fun of him for and he doesn’t really have any gravitas or status in our social circle.

I see friends who admire and respect their husbands and their opinions and I wish I had that. I feel that I can’t trust his judgement. He’s not serious enough.

What's your impressive job? How much gravitas or status do you have in your social circle? How much more $$ do you make than your husband?

I work at State. No mean to brag but it is an “impressive” DC job. I don’t make much but I do have status.

OP, you're a legend in your own mind. You need to appreciate your DH for who he is and not try to fit him where your "social circle" will admire him.

For a reference, do you recall Susan Schwab? Nobody knew her husband only went to HS, was a magician, yet she fell in love with him despite multiple degrees, Dean of UM's Public Policy School and USTR under GW Bush.

And, frankly, nobody cared.

From a Fortune magazine profile of Schwab:

"For months Schwab had been a fixture in Rangel's office, negotiating the bipartisan deal. The night before the flight to Tampa, she and Congressman McCrery spent two hours with the chairman and top staffers, quietly working out the details.

The night in Rangel's office might have been a happier moment, except that it was also the tenth anniversary of her wedding to Curtis Carroll, who had died four months earlier. His passing had been announced in a terse AP news item that raised more questions than it answered. "Curtis Carroll, a professional magician, died Monday of kidney and liver failure, Schwab spokesman Sean Spicer said."

The news surprised those who didn't know her well: Susan Schwab, Washington policy wonk, academic dean, was married to a professional magician, uneducated past high school and, it turned out, alcoholic.

She met Carroll in 1995, during Christmas vacation with relatives aboard a cruise from Hong Kong to Singapore. Far-flung travel was familiar to Schwab: Her family bounced around Africa on account of her father's job with the State Department. Schwab learned how to ride horses with the Tunisian calvary. In Sierra Leone she returned from an outing to a village market with her father, reached into her gingham pocket, and pulled out a mongoose as a present to her little sister Teresa. They named it Sputnik.

Wherever she went, Schwab seemed to know where she was heading. "Every now and then you get a child who is born knowing what they want, who is very self-motivated and very self-directed," says her sister Teresa Marshall. "That was not me. That was Susan."

By age 40, when Sue met Carroll, she was accomplished and single - and not especially in the market for a husband, especially a cruise-ship magician with an erratic income. By all accounts, Carroll was a talented entertainer and "hysterically funny," as Schwab notes. "Curtis was the funny and warm and creative side of me."

At the time they married in 1997, she was dean of the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy and busy building it into a nationally recognized institution. Schwab's husband, meanwhile, pursued a magician's life, traveling to corporate events, often with Schwab.

Then another side emerged. "Curtis became an alcoholic, or maybe he was and I didn't know it," she recalls. "It got worse and worse, and the last couple of years it was pretty strained because I was doing what all spouses and loved ones of alcoholics do beg, plead, threaten, try to rescue. And then at some point you figure out there isn't a damn thing you can do. No matter how much you love the guy, no matter how much he loves you."

The rescue extended to pouring their savings into a magician's theater in Florida to boost his career. But the theater failed financially, and friends say Curtis never recovered. "He'd go to rehab," Schwab recalls. "He was in and out. I didn't realize how sick he was, quite frankly."

Emotionally drained, she took an apartment in downtown Washington while Carroll lived in their Annapolis home. She said yes to an offer to become deputy U.S. trade representative in 2005, then was promoted in 2006 to trade ambassador, on the eve of the breakdown of the latest round of World Trade Organization talks in Geneva.

Determined to salvage the talks, Schwab traveled 87,000 miles in three months to try to piece the negotiations back together. "I'm enough of an economist that I really felt I was creating wealth, helping people, creating U.S. exports - all the things I believe in," she says. Whether negotiating over trade in autos or dark-meat chicken parts, Schwab played well in the nuances of trade disputes. "These specific line items mean someone does or does not make a sale," she says.

Back in Annapolis, her husband's promised detox never materialized. By November he had developed jaundice and cirrhosis of the liver. Then his organs shut down. "He was 58, much too young to die that way," Schwab recalls through tears.

A week later she was scheduled to give a speech unveiling her new bipartisan trade approach. She kept the commitment. "Not giving the speech wouldn't have brought Curtis back," she says. She has been on airplanes ever since. Longtime friend and former Senator Bill Brock, a Tennessee Republican who was President Reagan's trade ambassador, calls her restless diplomacy a "real tour de force."

Anonymous wrote:What is 'gravitas or status in a social circle?'

+1 If your social circle makes fun if you’re DH for his job, then you need new friends and shouldn’t give a F what they think. C’mon - life is too short for this nonsense.

Status matters. When I was a "named" journalist in DC everyone wanted to talk to me at parties and lots of people wanted to be my good friend. When I got laid off a lot of these friends disappeared. I now actually have higher status assignments under a pen name. Those who need to know already know. Those who don't are kept out of the picture.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DH is a great guy but he’s kind of a lightweight. He has a funny job that people make fun of him for and he doesn’t really have any gravitas or status in our social circle.

I see friends who admire and respect their husbands and their opinions and I wish I had that. I feel that I can’t trust his judgement. He’s not serious enough.

What's your impressive job? How much gravitas or status do you have in your social circle? How much more $$ do you make than your husband?

I work at State. No mean to brag but it is an “impressive” DC job. I don’t make much but I do have status.

I mean I get it but then if status matters to you (and that’s ok - imo the best thing a person can do for themselves is to be honest in their own mind about what they really want out of life), why did you marry a private investigator instead of someone with a more impressive career?

I love him.

I’m by no means a “career” digger. I wouldn’t marry a brain surgeon just because he’s a brain surgeon. While dating I met so many lawyers. And engineers with impressive credentials but we never clicked.

I’m in love with everything about my DH but his choice of a career grates on me some days. He can be so smart and his career is so...easy. All he does is dig dirt on people. He doesn’t require impressive thinking skills or credentials to get his job done. I value intelligence and drive very much. So I can’t help but keeep picking at it.

He has long hours and makes better money than many impressive careers. So there’s that.

You really need to work on yourself because you sound awful and your husband sounds great.

+1, not to mention that she has posted at least 2 other times on this very topic and sounds ridiculous each time. OP you are ruining your own life by CHOOSING to obsess over this and see it negatively. You should really consider speaking to a therapist about this, and I am not saying that to be insulting. When life gives you an actual problem to be upset about you're going to regret wasting this time of your life being upset about something completely ridiculous.

My DH works in the seafood section of a national grocery store chain. My respect and admiration for him have nothing to do with his job. It has to do with him being a great person - hard working, dependable, funny and a great partner. I really don't care what DH does for a living as long as he's gainfully employed. If I wanted more HHI, I would have pursued a higher income job.

I consider us both very successful even though we are lower middle class. We are very successful in the things that matter. YMMV.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I sympathize. I am dying to know though, what is the job??

Private investigator.

Whenever we go to a dinner party he’s a hit. Everyone asks him questions but it’s not due to respect. It’s more of an amused incredulous fascination.

To be fair he is very very good at his job. When I attend his work events and see the respect and admiration his colleagues have for him, I definitely get turned on. But every one else thinks he is climbing trees and taking pictures of people having affairs.

I think he should dial back on telling work stories and be a bit more mysterious instead of the "entertainment." Hint at a couple serious assignments and then change the subject.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DH is a great guy but he’s kind of a lightweight. He has a funny job that people make fun of him for and he doesn’t really have any gravitas or status in our social circle.

I see friends who admire and respect their husbands and their opinions and I wish I had that. I feel that I can’t trust his judgement. He’s not serious enough.

What's your impressive job? How much gravitas or status do you have in your social circle? How much more $$ do you make than your husband?

I work at State. No mean to brag but it is an “impressive” DC job. I don’t make much but I do have status.

I mean I get it but then if status matters to you (and that’s ok - imo the best thing a person can do for themselves is to be honest in their own mind about what they really want out of life), why did you marry a private investigator instead of someone with a more impressive career?

I love him.

I’m by no means a “career” digger. I wouldn’t marry a brain surgeon just because he’s a brain surgeon. While dating I met so many lawyers. And engineers with impressive credentials but we never clicked.

I’m in love with everything about my DH but his choice of a career grates on me some days. He can be so smart and his career is so...easy. All he does is dig dirt on people. He doesn’t require impressive thinking skills or credentials to get his job done. I value intelligence and drive very much. So I can’t help but keeep picking at it.

He has long hours and makes better money than many impressive careers. So there’s that.

You really need to work on yourself because you sound awful and your husband sounds great.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm sorry OP. I respect and admire my husband very much. His ambition and intelligence were some of the things that attracted me to him in the first place. He built a billion dollar business from scratch. He had some help obviously but he did most of the work himself. Not many people can say that (including me) and I genuinely admire it.

Even YOU can't say that? Wow.

But back to OP - OP, I admire and respect my husband very much some days/moments. Other times he does or says things and I'm like "really?"

One thing I have observed is that it's very easy for perception to shift based on context. I am sure your DH is good at something. Do you get to observe him in situations where he shines? You might not see him in those contexts often enough. As an example, my DH is a professor. I rarely see him giving seminars or teaching, but when I do it usually turns me on to be reminded of his strengths!

Come off it. She didn't say "even her" she said "including her"

MOST people have not built a billion dollar business on their own. Including you.

PP, and this was exactly my point. It was hilarious that she had to let us know that not even SHE has done it!

I think she was saying she’s genuinely impressed because it’s an objectively impressive accomplishment.

the funny part will be when op divorces him and he investigates her and destroys her during the divorce

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm sorry OP. I respect and admire my husband very much. His ambition and intelligence were some of the things that attracted me to him in the first place. He built a billion dollar business from scratch. He had some help obviously but he did most of the work himself. Not many people can say that (including me) and I genuinely admire it.

Even YOU can't say that? Wow.

But back to OP - OP, I admire and respect my husband very much some days/moments. Other times he does or says things and I'm like "really?"

One thing I have observed is that it's very easy for perception to shift based on context. I am sure your DH is good at something. Do you get to observe him in situations where he shines? You might not see him in those contexts often enough. As an example, my DH is a professor. I rarely see him giving seminars or teaching, but when I do it usually turns me on to be reminded of his strengths!

Come off it. She didn't say "even her" she said "including her"

MOST people have not built a billion dollar business on their own. Including you.

PP, and this was exactly my point. It was hilarious that she had to let us know that not even SHE has done it!

Anonymous wrote:My husband has an MD/PhD, a stratospheric IQ, does scientific research...
and refuses to treat his severe ADHD, which makes him a lousy husband and father. I have lost so much respect for him, because he thinks only of himself and can't figure out how to care for anyone else, logistically or emotionally.

Would you rather have that, OP?

Sounds like my mathematician husband...

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I sympathize. I am dying to know though, what is the job??

Private investigator.

Whenever we go to a dinner party he’s a hit. Everyone asks him questions but it’s not due to respect. It’s more of an amused incredulous fascination.

To be fair he is very very good at his job. When I attend his work events and see the respect and admiration his colleagues have for him, I definitely get turned on. But every one else thinks he is climbing trees and taking pictures of people having affairs.

OMG OP this is not your first thread on this. You REALLY need to get over this. It's a perfecty respectable job, very interesting, and requiring true skill. You are pathetic to judge it and you do not deserve your husband.

Too bad you can't have the same level of admiration and respect for him that the people he works with have. Sounds like your problem, not his.

I respect and admire my husband for all of the work he did with victims of Domestic Violence during his career in law enforcement. He just retired after 26 years. He was shot at during a DV call (his first week on the job), and the bullet grazed the side of his head. He didn't back down, didn't let it scare him, but went on to try to do his best for anyone who needed help. He managed to make it through without being affected by PTSD, he's cheerful and jolly, takes everything in stride, and makes me laugh all of the time. I am blessed to have him in my life.