My husband left an amazing paying job to be self employed. He has no health insurance and work is sporadic with him making alot or nothing. I begged mt husband to stay at his old job and he stated how unhappy he was. I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt and try his own business but it's not working out. I try to tell him these things about no insurance or no consistency. He does not care to at least hear what I have to say. It's effecting our marriage in a terrible way. I can't even stand to be around him because I have so much resentment towards him. I work full time and my paycheck has had to go to bailing him out of his business choice that he made regardless of how I felt. At this point, I'm considering divorce. Any advice would be helpful.

My God. You sound so unsupportive! It sounds like he told you he was very unhappy in his previous job, yet you wanted him to stick at it because of the ‘good money’ it brought in. Talk about callous! He might have been on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Now that he’s trying something new to try to find something for himself and his mental happiness, you want to divorce him?! Christ…

Any time I ask him about his business plans I am told that it does not involve me. May I remind you that I have funded this business starting up as well even though I don't agree with it. He's been in business for almost a year and it's not going as well as he thought. I tried to let him know how hard it is to run a business. I don't want him to fail but he's the type of person that won't listen and has to do it himself before he knows I was right. I can't add him to my health insurance because it would cost over $500 a pay for the both of us which I refused to do. I'm not working just to pay health insurance.He was not happy at his old job but was offered another one paying even better with great benefits and turned it down. I was very upset and he knew I was. He told me it was his decision. I'm not 100% happy at my job either but if I would quit at this point it was be devastating financially.

If the business was doing well and he had health insurance I would support him 100%. I'm just trying to be realistic about it. The books don't care if you have business or not and it's a slow time. I can't afford to pay his truck payment, a tractor payment or my mortgage alone. We have been barely scrapping by because he needs to live his dream while I'm working to make sure we can pay our bills. I just feel like I'm putting 80% financially and he's putting in 20%. When we bought this house it was based off of his previous income and we never struggled. Now we can barely pay our bills because of his decision.

Hi, Maybe try to sit down with him and set a timeframe eg if the business doesn’t Stewart turning a profit by the 18 month mark, he will start applying for paid employment, or, working as a casual contractor for another business in tandem with still pushing his own business forward, so at least he has some income stream.

It can be difficult to get a new business up and running to the point of making a profit. Are there any assets you could both agree to sell? Could he get a cheaper truck to reduce payments? Does he need the tractor for his business?

If he won’t compromise, but still expects you to fund his lifestyle choice, then a really serious, but calm, discussion is needed. It’s about finding a balance that you’re both ok with. It sounds as if you’d have never agreed to him quitting his paid job and trying self-employment, which is why I suspect he didn’t involve you, or ask your opinion about leaving his paid job. Is he intimidated by you and the financial pressure, so he flipped out and thought ‘to hell with it all, I’m just going to try it!’ Or, is he a bully who doesn’t care about your feelings and has always done what he feels like doing, without caring about potential consequences for your relationship?

If you stand to lose your home, your savings, your marriage-then obviously something needs to change. How long does he project it’ll take until his business starts being financially successful? Is that a sustainable amount of time? Would he benefit from seeking business coaching and marketing guidance? How much are you both spending on trying to ‘maintain a lifestyle?’ Is there potential for his business to make good money in the future?

Ultimately…if you’re feeling disrespected and unhappy in the relationship, you need to talk. If you take money out of the equation-how is everything else in your marriage? Do you generally get along when you’re not worried about money? Do you hug? Do you trust each other’s decisions? Do you love each other? Do you enjoy each other’s companionship? Is he supportive of you?