here is my situation right now. married for 19 years have two girls, one is graduated one still in high school. Husband in an industry that is unstable, longest position in one place in the last 15 years is 2 years. Me...i have worked in the same place for 12 years now. H jobs have taken him out of town and many times we have had to live apart. He has many times gotten upset b/c i have not moved with him but with the instabilty in his jobs is not a good thing, if i had my kids would of had to be uprooted to a different town 6 times in the last 8 years. I couldn't do that, my job has supported us many times when he has lost his job as well. He has just got a job last spring 2 hours away, too far to comute, he gets november to mid march off (as its seasonal). He is pressuring me to move there..he hasn't even gotten his contract approved for next years work yet, i am willing to go but i dont' want to for another 8 months as my daughter has an incredible opportunity to do an exchange to europe for 4 months that her father told her to go for. Now he is upset b/c this will mean we won't move until after that. It is frustrating, he is the one that said yes to her for this, yet now he is upset b/c he is living alone for another season of work, which i will never see him anyways in those months b/c he works up to 60 hours a week! so...am i in the wrong for saying no i don't want to right now? its scary b/c it also means me giving up the stable job that we depend on.

Why can't he choose an industry that doesn't require moving around so much?

i don't know..its hard b/c that is what he is trained in and he has been doing it for all these years, needless to say there is high divorce rate for people in this industry, im actually one of the few of the people we know in the same industry that have stayed married. Everytime he goes to a new position he is so sure its going to last...saying this is it, its all good, to find out at the end of one or two years that he gets the boot,mostly because of conflict between him and management or due to his wage being to high and they can find someone for lower.

I was just going to ask if this wasn't something resulting of HIS actions. My H did the same thing - he kept his job, but he missed out on all the promotions because of the way he interacted; no one wanted him to move up.

Does he acknowledge this? If so, it would be your right to say that it's your actions that have put us in this position (in a nice way, of course!), so I don't think we should uproot the kids because of your work situation.

But seriously? He sounds like he's making excuses for why he doesn't succeed, and laying it all at the feet of everyone else. So, no, I wouldn't trust moving my family if he has that kind of 'luck.'

thank you the feeback helps, he makes me feel like im the one to blame for this. He tells me last night that i haven't made a change in my career for over 12 years! you think that would be to most people a good thing...i am paid well and its secure! He is making me feel bad for worrying what will happen if i quit, there is no way i'd get a position like this with these wages anywhere else. If my daughter was finished school i'd definately move right now but its hard doing that to her knowing in another year he may be on to the next job.
I do feel he makes excuses for him not suceeding and does lay the blame on me, he even says that if I had moved to some of these places with him that he would probably be at that job even though the job ended not b/c i wasn't there but b/c of conflict with him and the owner or manager. He just doesn't see the importance of stability for our kids,i truly believe that it does put a strain on teens when they have to move and stability in a home and financially is so important. agggh i just don't know what to do..im so tired of it.
thanks for the ear.

Ugh!

My H left a job at a major electronics manufacturer after 24 years, 5 years ago, to get a chance to run a small company. Turns out he was scammed, the company was bankrupt, he gave up FIVE weeks' annual vacation, and unbelievable benefits. Since then, he's been working really bad jobs, just to pay the bills, and each job gets worse and worse and worse.

I left a job at NASA after 11 years, to earn more money, and have been miserable ever since.

Don't listen to him. If nothing else, ask him to show you in what ways his life has improved by having to move from job to job.

Heck, I'd just be honest with him. Tell him what you think of him and his excuses, and how disappointed you are in him for choosing to blame all his issues on other people.

I tried to protect my H from his blameshifting for 30 years. Because of it, he lost the ability to see his own faults. But others didn't. He has become less and less valued by people he knows, because HE thinks everyone else has hurt him, but everyone ELSE sees that he is his own worst enemy.

So just yesterday, I tried something new. He lost a vote at church to get on the council, and he spent all day figuring out whose fault it was (of course, not his). So after half a day of listening to this, all his reasons why they wouldn't vote for him, I finally said 'well, maybe it's because one of the kids from this summer's trip told his parents about your meltdown, and now they don't like you.' (he had gotten mad at the kids and chewed them all out, big time; very inappropriate)

He got that deer in the headlights look when I said that. Huh. Never thought about it being his own fault, lol.

But I think that giving this info back to him, gently, slowly, is good for him. Maybe your H would benefit from it, too.

ETA: btw, you might ask the mods to move this to the 101 section, so you'll get more people reading and responding.