Compassion In Times Of Financial Crisis

Q: This economy is really creating all kinds of problems. I hear people complaining about their reduced lifestyles and panicking about mounting bills. We all know that we're undergoing a recession and that means that many people have to revise their goals and what they can expect from life -even whether they can afford to retire. I know all this, so I feel a little bad when I ask this question: Why can't I blame my husband -- not for the economy but for his failed attempt to protect us, me and the kids, from what's happened. Frankly, I'm mad as hell.

I married my husband assuming that each of us would pursue our assigned roles. I did my best job as a homemaker and as a mother and as a wife. I spent my household budget in a prudent way; I didn't overspend. We ate well. We entertained well. The children had everything they needed. In other words, I took care of my end of the bargain.

My husband was supposed to secure our future, me and the kids. He was supposed to see to it that we could travel, take family trips. Sometimes I would wonder where the money was coming from, but he always blew me off: Don't worry, honey, I'll take care of everything.

So, guess what? I did what I was supposed to do, but he's not doing what he was supposed to do. He says he has lost all of our savings and his job is even in jeopardy. We are now really struggling and the future scare me to death. The children have to figure out a way to pay for college. Vacations are out. We may even have to sell the house -our dream house -and move to a smaller place. He has even hinted that maybe with the kids being older, I could find a job or cut down on my household expenses.

WHAT!!! Boy, do I resent him! I am so angry. I lived up to my part of the bargain, but he has reneged on his. The kids know what's going on. They, too, feel betrayed. They find it difficult to even have a conversation with him. He wants us all to sit down as a family in order to figure out what to do. No way, I say. Let him sit down and figure out what to do. He figured out how to get us into this hole, let him figure out how to get us out. I am not even sure I want to stay married to him. I will take what's left and let him start over again!

A: WHOAH!! You need to take a deep breath, count to ten, and analyze the situation. Who are you actually mad at? What do you think all this anger will accomplish? If you divorce your husband, who's going to take care of you? -for from what you say, you're a woman who needs to be taken care of. Better stay put for the moment. You'd be a seller entering a buyer's market.
Let's try to look at this step-by-step.

It seems obvious to me that you and your husband did, indeed, have an arrangement -just not the one you thought. Your real arrangement went like this: he would satisfy your need to be infantilized and you would satisfy his need to be the Big Shot -both to you and to your children. Then the economy crashed and the Big Shot is big no more. Maybe he was not wise about how he invested your money -it was yours, too, after all -and maybe he played the Big Shot in this area too -with awful consequences. If he seems a failure to you, just imagine how he must look to himself.

So show some understanding. Your husband must be in some pain. He knows he's failed you and the kids -and maybe he even knows you fantasize about getting a divorce. Added to this psychic burden is a very real financial one. He's in a jam. The bills are mounting up. The future looks bleak. Now is the time for your entire family to gather round and support one another. Now is not the time for recriminations. There's always time for that, if you insist.
As for you, yes, your husband has let you down. But you bought into it. You're an adult and you could have looked at the books and wondered about your investments and asked about how much money was being saved. You're not a little girl. You're a woman, a wife, a mother. Instead of pitching in, you want to cut and run. Even if you managed to pull that off, in no time you'd realize what you've done and feel disgusted with yourself.

Remember you marriage vows--for richer or poorer. Whatever happens between you and your husband, you still have a solemn obligation to your kids. You have to show them how adults weather tough times. Their life will not always be charmed. Adjusting to adversity requires tools that you and your children obviously do not yet have. Now is the time to get them. Your children will follow your lead. Show them how to find strength and show them how to be a compassionate person.

I don't want to completely throw the blame onto you, because this environment is one that has left a lot of us feeling abandoned and betrayed. Many marriages and relationships are under pressure. It is hard to figure out exactly whom to be angry at. Is it the government? The financial community? The unions? The list seems to grow longer every day. So, when we feel uncertainty, we sometimes want to focus our frustration on the person closest to us. In this way, we concretize our emotions. In your case, you've chosen your husband. Wasn't he supposed to know what to do? Wasn't he supposed to protect the family and ensure its future? Wasn't he supposed to focus on his responsibilities? He probably did. I cannot be sure of that.

Whatever the case, he is not alone. Many families now find themselves in trouble. They may have worked hard for a company that now is going bankrupt. They may have trusted an investment counselor who turned out to be a crook. It is almost impossible to not be adversely affected by the dismal economy.

So, before you leave the marriage, try to shift your focus to compassion, not anger, and start to become constructive rather than destructive. Work with your children and your husband to understand your financial problems. What can each one contribute? This is an opportunity for emotional growth. Up until this time, the only one in the family who was looking out for the entire unit was your husband -and he did it in an immature way. Isn't it time for all of to grow up?

Comments

[Bitsko]

Here's a solution that worked quite well in my grandparent's time (World War One through the Great Depression): UNIONIZE!

[missviv]

My dad lost his job two years after moving to this country. My mom, who moved here shortly after he did because she didn't want me to grow up without my father, didn't sit around and complain about how he let her down and about how she wasn't going to have a luxurious American dream. With the little English she knew, she went out and got not one - but two jobs and started helping my dad with the bills. I'm sure she was scared, and even upset, but she did what she could to help her husband and provide for me. This lady is mad because her trophy wife status is in jeopardy, in 2008 how pathetic is that? A grown woman understands that she can't sit around and depend on a man to carry her through mud her entire life. Put pride aside, get a job and do what you must to help your family survive.

With the way the economy is going, she's lucky her and her family aren't out on the street and at least appreciate the fact that her husband is reaching out to his family for help.

[SeriousBlack]

WHOAH is right. The only thing I can say is that if the husband at least still has a job, then there is hope. (I've been jobless for two months and things aren't looking good as the economy keeps getting worse and worse.) Plus, how many guys don't even try to communicate with their family about a grim financial situation? At least this guy wanted them to all come together and pow-wow about it.

[Berkeleyan]

The person who asked the question must be either "lucky" (for having no financial contribution to the family) or uncaring about her husband. Being responsible for the financial needs of a family is a lot of work. I am a wife, a mother, a homemaker (I do gardening, home painting, house fixing with husband, cooking, sewing, cleaning, making jewelry for friends, etc.), and a full-time professional (with six-figure income) contributing all most as much as my husband in term of salary. I also help him as much as I can with investing. I never asked for family travel or family entertainment, unless my husband can handle it. I am the only woman in my neighborhood who wears suits to work, yet can still climb the ladder to paint our house or yank the weeds in the yard like a blue color worker. I am always thankful that I have a great husband and that I can do a lot to help him. I wish that my son will marry a working wife like me, not just a homemaker who does not work outside the home.

[MsIrisMG]

I hear what you are saying, I think. It's good that your son may have a working wife one day, but couldn't it be possible that it's just as important that if she chooses to stay home with the kids, that she at least be aware of the household finances and not rely solely on hubby to "take care of her". I believe THAT attitude on the woman's part has no real place in today's economic situation. Also I have to say, and hope you will come to understand, too, that there is no shame in living on one income. Even someone with a "blue collar" wage can do this and live comfortably, as long as your lifestyle doesn't involve a lot of material things. The less you need in life, the less money you need to take care of those needs. There's nothing wrong with either the wife or the husband staying home and the other one working, especially if children enter the mix. It's when this "American dream" involves the care and feeding of a large SUV, designer clothes, a McMansion, and other outward means of "keeping up appearances" that couples get in over their head. They seem to feel entitled to a lifestyle that makes them look like wealthy folk, when in actually they could well be happy in that 2 bedroom house with the detached garage in the older part of town. You know what I mean.

[Berkeleyan]

Thanks for your comment. I was born in a third world, war-torn country in the 50s and back then, my father already taught all of his daughters to get a high education and be financially independent, so that if something happens to our husbands (either they die early or we are abandoned/­divorced), we can always support our children and ourselves. As such, staying at home to live on our husbands' income was not an option for us. We, my father's daughters, are too proud to live on our husbands' income, while raising our families.

[RPLinNYC]

Sounds like that letter was written in the 1950s.
I shudder to think what kind of behavior and attitude this lady has been modeling for her kids.

Nice to hear the therapist's tactful reply.

[cayuse]

Today cannot be compared in the least to being fed to the Lions or Witnessing the first atomic bomb as a recipient, but maybe we can take the breath and pause for just a minute.

Realizing our material lives mean very little in the mix of it all

2009 years ago was a physical birth, symbolized in many ways beyond our little material lifes. But witnessed by all in name if not deed ever since. There is no denying what ever our individual consciousness can conceive it to be.

In the word of GOD, be in the world, but not of it, seek ye first the Spirit World and not the body and its materialism.

Has or Will or Can it ever change? Unless you follow the teaching, be it Christ, Buddha, Krishna, Mohammad, Or your own inner enlightenment, strive on. But if you pause you surely may take a different trek from darkness to light, from death to eternity. The journey it is not a club, it is not a belief. It is a consciousness, it is action and it is YOU living GOD within and without. It is you living righteously no matter how small you live materially

[OtayPanky]

Now here's a sane (and yes, compassionate) blog in the midst of all the mush that HuffPo publishes in the LIVING section.

Guess what? Most of these purveyors of life coaching, happiness coaching, relationship coaching, etc are going to be driving cabs or working in the grocery store to make ends meet. Essentially middle class people aren't going to be spending $100, $200 and even $300 per hour to have someone else listen to their stuff and direct their lives.

Those days are over.

There's a great article in this month's Vanity Fair (I didn't buy the damn thing, I browsed it at the drugstore) about how even the super-rich are dispensing with all sorts of services that they gladly paid for during the gilded age, which has just come crashing to it's inevitable end.

So now we're all going to have to dig deep down, and look at our lives and our life scripts honestly - each of us as adults - without infantalizing ourselves with a host of "helpers" because we just can't afford it.

It's a difficult shift - but a necessary passage to adulthood, at long last.

As for all the therapists, coaches and other overpaid life consultants - well, they're going to have to do the very same thing. The honest ones will bumble their way through, just like the rest of us. The frauds and charlatans and hucksters will simply look for other ways to fleece the sheep.

[missviv]

Here's a quote from one of my favorite essays, "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" by the obscenely clever and witty, Mr. Oscar Wilde.
"...For the recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses. It has led Individualism entirely astray. It has made gain not growth its aim. So that man thought that the important thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be. The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is."

[OtayPanky]

I'd say history has proven Wilde's observations here superficial.

We have a century's worth of data about what the non-recogntion of private property does and does not do. And one thing is clear: eliminating personal ownership doesn't do a damn thing to develop an individual's character. In the Soviet Union and elsewhere, the soulless petty bourgeoisie were simply swapped out for the equally soulless party apparatchik.

Of course it is a truism to say your true worth is in who you are, not what you own. You'll find such statements in every religious tradition and much of the world's philosophy.

But to think that swapping out economic systems is going to fix man's innate (and apparently infinite) capacity for egoic grasping - whether for power, money, sex or whatever - is, in a word, wishful thinking.

It's not a pretty picture of the human condition - but it IS reality based, and therefore a good place to start.