Parent has anxiety over taking prestigious job offer

Hi, Carolyn: I work from home in a position I absolutely love — I would happily stay for at least a few more years. However, due to my education and experience, I’m qualified for much higher-level jobs, and applied for one on the advice of a former academic adviser. I got the job and accepted the offer. It comes with a prestigious title, 50 percent raise and decent job security.

I had a full-on anxiety attack when I got the offer letter, and every time I think about it, I feel nauseous and anxious and want to throw up. I feel like I’m ruining a good thing. This new job will be tougher hours, have a commute, require professional clothing every day and be very visible politically, all things I currently enjoy not having in my life.

I’m also married and hoping to start a family soon. My spouse also works from home, but at a fairly lowpaying job — in a field they love — and they haven’t applied for a single new job since we met. They have progressed career-wise, but aren’t as motivated as they like to talk up. I’m tired of, “Next year I’ll get a job that pays well.”

I have a lot of built-up resentment. I feel like I have to take this job to pay for our rent and a child and our lifestyle.

On top of all of it, I do the vast majority of chores and emotional labor, and I’m just tired of it all.

I guess I’m asking, is there another perspective on all this? I think logistically I have to take the job, so how do I get over the anxiety and resentment? It could be a wonderful fit, and I could love it, too; if I decided not to take it, I’d always wonder.

And is it a bad idea to bring a child into this?

It’ll all get worse, won’t it?

Anonymous

Answer: Yes, it’s a bad idea to bring a child into this. (So unfair to the child.)

It’s also a bad idea to bring a job into this.

Either take the job or don’t take the job because that’s what you want; don’t take the job because you feel cornered into it by [counting on my fingers] your spouse’s inertia, your lifestyle, your family plans, your rent, your ex-adviser, your education and experience, your frustration over broken promises, that side-eye you keep getting from your cat.

Just as these aren’t good enough reasons to take on a challenging new job, anxiety flare-ups aren’t good enough reasons not to take on a challenging new job. Anxiety is a reason to seek treatment for your anxiety.

That, in turn, will help you make better decisions, and act better on the decisions you make.

Similarly: Your spouse’s inertia — and your frustration, money concerns, family planning, and domestic and emotional labor imbalances — are all reasons to turn your attention to your marriage. Clearly you need to renegotiate the division of labor; an arrangement that breeds resentment is not sustainable. And if you’re upgrading your job only because your spouse won’t, then that needs due airing.

However, it’s not so clear what else has to change, if anything. What happens if you both stay in these lower-paying jobs you love? Does happiness count?

Is it possible they “talk up” so much only because you keep pushing them to trade up?

Is earning more your only option? Are your lifestyle costs so nonnegotiable, they decide what you both do for a living? Or is spending less an option?

I see several different problems, pressures, needs, hopes and ambitions too knotted up for you to address any of them effectively. That alone could be making you anxious. It would also explain why it’s so tempting just to hope the prestigious new job fixes everything.

I hope you’ll slow yourself (way) down, separate the different threads and give each of them your full attention, one at a time, in a logical order. Such as: anxiety, marriage, jobs/ career and then, only then, the kid question. Tease them apart, then put yourself back together.

Dear Carolyn: Unless a guy has more than one wife, using “they” to describe her makes him appear uneducated. It doesn’t matter who says it is OK, because it is not. It is bad grammar, and the feelings of those who don’t care that it is are no more important than the feelings of those who do care.

I will immediately stop reading anything that misuses “they” like that. No loss to either of us.

Answer: A person using “they” as a singular pronoun does seem uneducated, yes. But language is not static, nor is culture, and I think we can both agree the arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend toward grammatical precision. That’s why the person harrumphing new usage quickly becomes the one sounding uneducated. An outcome you precipitate, by the way, by limiting what you read.