Wife wants to become a stay at home mom - I'm not comfortable

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
141

Kudos to you and your wife for the great communication. Are you still planning on marriage counseling?

It occurs to me that MLM’s are very appealing to women who have low self-esteem and/or who lack the education or experience to see a rewarding future for themselves. It’s not just the photos of couples posing with fruity drinks on the tropical paradise vacation they can now afford; it’s the self-confident smiles, the “I was just like you, doubting myself and working a dead-end job, and look at me now!” stories.

What field interests your wife? What’s holding her back from getting the education/experience she’d need in that field?

142

Hey, I just found this article you might use as a basis for discussion. It talks about the modern form of MLMs that have blown up on social media, and all the problems with them.

When Multi-Level Marketing Met Gen-Z

I would also encourage her to look for this particular company on YouTube or Reddit in the anti-MLM forum to read horror stories… some people are more persuaded by anecdote.

143

This is excellent!

IMHO you should have taken the win and ended THAT PARTICULAR round here. More often than not, you want a conversation to end when you’re both in agreement and feeling good.

Here’s where you kind of blew it. Of course, she was going to get defensive-- you weren’t surprised, were you? I don’t know either of you and I’m not surprised.

If you can possibly keep the “let’s be happily married and take care of our son” discussions a bit separate from the “MLM is nuts” (which it is) discussion, that would be good. If possible, don’t even discuss those two topics on the same day.

You don’t need to cover every issue in every conversation. Try to end more discussions on an upbeat, “we agree” note and fewer on a downer. Let her have the last word from time to time, too. Keep the Big Picture in mind.

Here’s another suggestion (since you asked :stuck_out_tongue: ) don’t talk about MLM on your date night. Have a night when you both remember why you got married in the first place.

144

Excellent news.

By all means, keep a discussion open on what she might want to do to earn money instead of MLM, or still offer to get input from a business advisor on running a business out of the home. It doesn’t have to be MLM. She could get into doing reupholstering, sewing, selling sweets, or catering. One person I know started making chocolate truffles and landed a contract with a high-level hotel chain. She admits that it is hard work and doesn’t replace the benefits of a full time job but it is income that lets her be there when the kids get home from school.

145

Regarding the MLM - if she has been going to “oil meetings” for a while, with her mom, and her friends are all in the MLM… who does she plan to sell to? If there’s already a successful oil lady in your community there is zero chance for your wife to have a successful customer base. You need customers more than faith.

146

No, no, selling isn’t really the point. Recruiting is the point. Your wife may find a few customers, but she’ll quickly learn–heck, the company will tell her–that the way to earn more is to recruit others so you get a cut of their sales, then get those recruits to sucker–I mean recruit–others, ad infinitum or until it crashes. This is how MLM’s are like pyramid schemes. It’s also why your wife’s mom and friends are pushing to recruit her.

147

I haven’t read all the posts on this thread, but … to the OP …

Are there other home-based businesses/jobs that your wife might be able to do that would allow her the flexibility she seeks, potentially better income, time with your kids, and dodging the MLM nightmare ?

I’m wondering whether helping her create a workable alternative that meets her needs and addresses your concerns might sell better.

Here’s just one jumping off point. I’m sure there are countless others – particularly now:

Good luck !

148

I’m on Reddit right now reading about it. It’s fuckin’ ugly.

149

One thing you can do to protect your family’s financial situation is to set aside some seed money for the MLM in a separate bank account and then that’s all that can be spent. Anything else for the MLM has to come from the MLM’s revenue and bank account. If it goes to zero, the experiment is over. There’s nothing wrong with trying out a new business idea, but it shouldn’t take the family’s finances down if it fails. That’s where lots of people get into trouble with an MLM. They keep buying in deeper with the hopes of making more back. If the MLM is really successful, then you won’t have to add more because the profits will make it self-supporting.

150

Yeah. That is the thought if she really leaves her job is to separate financially.

For the time being the plan is to work on us. We have not revisited what I said that obviously upset her last night and things are comfortable tonight. Over time I’ll introduce her to more negative stories about this MLM.

If she wants to be a stay at home, she needs to find something realistic that will make money and not cost money.

151

filmore, great in theory but I’m dealing with a family friend whose husband just pulled grocery and bill money out of their account to buy a car to fix and flip. When she confronted him on this (like how are we going to eat?!), he said you know this was what I was into when we got married. So how confident is the OP that his wife will abide by that arrangement?

152

There’s a reason that the number one cause of divorce is finances.

May I suggest YNAB?

153

So, was he into this kind of thing when they got married?

My dad tried this as a side hustle for a while, and IDK what was said to him, or by whom, but he gave it up as abruptly as he started. Not only was this taking time away from his family, but he was blatantly losing money on this enterprise.

154

That sounds really promising. Good for you for trying to make this work.

155

I think what’s more concerning than the specifics of your finances and work situations is that your wife is making unilateral decisions that affect the family without really discussing them with you. And it doesn’t help that she seems to be making them viewing the world through an irrational prism. The obvious problem with that is if you don’t agree to it (i.e. being a single income household where your wife is a SAHM dabbling in MLM), your “love” for your partner becomes a test of “how much shit will I put up with”.

Also, just because someone has “feelings” doesn’t mean that you are going to be able to meet those needs if they result in you living a very different life from the one you want to live. Ideally you probably don’t want to get divorced. Particularly not with two kids. But you also don’t want to spend the next 5, 10, 20+ years congratulating yourself for putting up with a situation you hate while secretly muttering “what the fuck am I DOING here?!!”

As for your son, a 3 year arbitrarily throwing hour long tantrums and exhibiting repetitive sounds suspiciously like something on the Autism spectrum. Or it could just be stubborn “threenager” behavior. I would get it checked.

156

Another one hit square on the head.

Lots of times in my life I’ve had things happen where I’ve had zero control, was just told to sit in the corner and take it. Very frustrating. Now our marriage has come to it as well - or we may be circling back and thinking harder about it. I have enough ammo to effectively poke holes in the essential oil business that I will introduce at some point.

Aside from that, she says true happiness for her would come from being a stay at home mom - but what about my happiness? Can I just stay at home and we just rely on the Good Lord for everything? Because I will not be happy being the sole provider.

And yes, a high functioning form of autism is on our minds for the boy. He is very intelligent but so set in his ways. When the wife puts him to bed she has to say the same words in the same order to him or he gets upset.

157

I agree that she should be consulting with you about this change – but have you been consulting with her about your major life choices? Did you ever consult with her about whether to take/keep your job, and about whether you should also be farming?

158

Kind of, but has never been successful at it. She got an inheritance for about $40k and he ran through it in about 6 months flipping cars. He is an idiot, he has no clue how business works, and he refuses to listen to anyone because he knows best.

And more to the point, you don’t pay for your side hustle when you don’t even have grocery money.

159

+i was an Army wife for many years, and I worked, too. It’s like having three or four jobs, because the service member has unreasonable hours, they are gone for varying lengths of time, and the burden of “everything else” falls on mom’s shoulders.

After one particularly trying time, I announced to Sgt VOW that after he retired from the Army, he would be the one to oversee the kids, plan and cook meals, and do laundry.

Sgt VOW got all happy and said, “Oh, I don’t mind staying home while you go to work!”

He earned a glowering look from me.

“No. You misunderstand. You’ll work, too! I just want to come home from my job, sit down with my feet up, a glass of iced tea in my hand, maybe checking all the channels on TV to see what looks good. You get to come home from work, wrangle kids, cook dinner, clean up the kitchen, supervise homework, maybe throw a load of laundry in the washer. Oh, and refill my iced tea glass, please?”

It often takes at least two paychecks to survive in today’s world. There is no such thing as “woman’s” work or “man’s” work. Employment insecurity means that today’s job can evaporate overnight, and a new job isn’t waiting around the corner for you. Businesses closing, reorganization, mergers, cutbacks have left too many people beating the pavement, looking for anything, just to bring a few bucks home. Some of those management decisions during reorganization or mergers meant retirement funds were raided. People worked faithfully for 20-30-40 years, only to be forced into retirement with no retirement check waiting for them.

The glory days of the 1950s are long gone.

.~VOW

160

Yes, although one time (2016) she was upset I made the decision without asking her much about it. I used to (for ten years) work rotating shift jobs. I was offered over $4 more an hour with better benefits for the same job at a start up plant with a different process. Why was she upset? Partially because I didn’t consult with her much (“oh so you got the offer, you’re gonna take it just like that?”) and partially because I had been at the previous job for just shy of four years and she felt embarrassed for her family that she had what she felt was a job hopper for a husband (her dad had a shitload of different jobs before settling in on what he knew and made sense).

To repeat what I said above, every job change I have had was to benefit US, OUR FAMILY, not just me. For more money in the previous example (ended up being a lot more), to straight days with the same money for the next move after that (but still every other weekend without holidays off), to close to the same money but now on salary with all holidays and weekends off - what more is important for a guy with a wife and two little kids at home?

As far as the farming goes, that has been difficult to make her understand that it’s profitable. I’ve always told her that every mortgage payment we make is an increase in our equity. I do have reports printed from my regular visit to the bank that maybe I should sit her down and show the steady increase in net worth and what that means - on the flip side comes the comment, “well, if we are doing so well then why does it bother you I’m quitting?”