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Business English

My jobless husband needs to snap out of the sulks

von Lucy Kellaway

A 42-year-old woman wrote: My husband has just lost his job on Wall Street. When he was in work he was impossible, living on the adrenaline of deal-making. Now he loafs around the house, sullen, full of self-pity and criticising everything the children or I do. Should I pretend to be sympathetic?...

Or should I tell him to suck it up and be grateful that we are not under any financial pressure? I'm not going to divorce him, because of the children, but I would like to know if Masters of the Universe ever recover.

Read what Lucy Kellaway, "agony-aunt" of the Financial Times (London), answered:

Your problem has brought on such an outpouring of bile on FT.com that I strongly urge you not to look. According to readers, you are a chilly, go-getting cow in need of therapy. Your husband has toiled hard to keep you in designer frocks and needs your support; you are a sociopath for not providing it.

Maybe I'm a sociopath too, but I don't see it like that. Wall Street jobs can gobble up a man's life and soul (assuming there was one there in the first place) leaving him with nothing when the job ceases to be. I can imagine that a hyped-up, absent husband was not ideal, but that an angry, present one is even less so.

 Lucy Kellaway

Should you pretend to be sympathetic? No, you shouldn't. Former Masters of the Universe don't like sympathy, especially if they sense it is false. But neither should you tell him to "suck it up", as that would be unnecessarily unpleasant.

Instead, I suggest forbearance and patience. His world has come crumbling down and while you can't pick it up for him, you can provide continuity by being exactly as before. Don't make allowances. Don't patronise him. If he is being horrible to the children, tell him off - and tell them that he doesn't mean it.

Take yourself off

I suggest you make no attempt to manage his time, but manage your own to make the new circumstances easier for you. Take yourself off to the gym, if it gets you away from his sharp tongue for a bit. As to whether MoUs recover, that depends on their mettle.

You may find that your husband is chastened by the experience of unemployment and becomes someone more to your liking.

More likely he will find another high- pressure job in time, and then you will find him just as hyped up and just as absent as before.

Quelle: The Financial Times, www.ft.com