Helping mitigate the damage of my SOs impulsive job decisions

[pizzawarehouse96]

I've been married to my wife for 3 years. I have been in medical school for the last year, so I am not currently employed. Over the last 1.5 years she has been quite volatile with jobs. She hypes up one place, saying that it will be high earning (she is a nail tech, so income is mostly dependent on customer base) and then within a few months (or even just 1-2 weeks sometimes) she will get in some sort of dispute with the owner and then tell me that they are horrible and unfair to her and quit. She's worked at 10+ salons now. I want to help her be happy where she is, or learn how to diffuse the situation long enough so that she can get back to a place  where her emotions aren't taking over.

Now, unfortunately, she is bilingual and most of her work friends speak Vietnamese. Usually I am pretty out of the loop on what is really going on, and she can talk to her friends for hours where they'll just affirm her view of things and make things worse, and I will have no idea what is going on because it is all being said in Vietnamese.

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[Ozzie101]

Hi and welcome, pizzawarehouse! You’ve come to a good place as we can “get” where you’re coming from.

I’ve been in a situation where my H’s volatility has led to job problems and I know how stressful and frustrating that can be. My H hasn’t been constantly changing jobs, but he has dealt with frequent frustrations and conflicts. In his case, I’m sure there were some legit problems, but his attitude and insistence on assigning blame, lashing out in anger, etc., didn’t help. He’s now out of work. Occasionally he blames himself and admits he yelled at some important people, but mostly he blames others.

All this to say, I get it. I know others here do too. What I’ve had to learn — and am still working on — is that I can’t change him. I can’t make him develop a better attitude. I can’t make him get along with people or have better coping mechanisms. And I can’t internalize his struggles and take them on as my own. He has his own decisions and actions. And his own consequences.

I suspect my H also had people at work and friends who reenforce his views and behaviors. They do it with personal things too — dangerous because these people usually only have a (skewed) part of the story and then our BPD loved one can take that as full validation.

When she tells you about her work struggles, how does she approach it? How do you usually respond?

One thing that’s helped me is mindfulness — taking a breath and really noticing how I feel. Anxious? Worried? Scared? Then I remind myself of what is “his” and what is “mine.”

I hope you’ll keep posting!