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Hi Carolyn: My partner completed an undergraduate degree but struggled to find a career in that industry. Under pressure from family, they followed and struggled through a career path they hated for two years before deciding to go back to college to complete another undergraduate.

Their mental health meant this was a difficult adjustment, and while I’m supporting them through it, they are still questioning if even now this is their right career path.

How can I keep helping them when they don’t know what they want to do? – E.

Foremost, you need to define “help” so that it’s a manageable size for one person who is not directly involved.

This is your partner’s struggle, and it’s bigger than just a career. By my count, there’s a mental health issue, a bad fit with the first career choice, an overinvolved family, your partner’s own susceptibility to pressure, an intemperance in decision-making that’s now responsible for two unsatisfying educations, and possibly a second bad career fit.

That’s a lot. So it’s understandable you want to help. But the role of even the most loving, involved bystander is to understand that you can’t jump in and fix it. You can’t be the one who: ❚ seeks the mental health care; ❚ does the hard emotional work; ❚ gains the self-knowledge; ❚ chooses the career; ❚ gets the training or education; ❚ sets and holds the boundaries with family. If your partner is not ready to do these, then you need to decide how to maintain your own well-being as your partner figures out how to get to that point.