Only a Very Happy Wife Can Afford to Stay at Home

“So you’re not looking for another job, huh?”. I heard this question from a few different people last month. Most of them seem a little bit worried when I say I don’t know what I want to do professionally in the long-term, and that I’m fine not knowing this until I get one or two more kids out of diapers. Isn’t this crazy irresponsible? Would anyone want to hire me after such a long break?

Perhaps it would be easier for them to understand my decision if my daughter wasn’t in a daycare already. If I don’t spend all my days with her, and I don’t have a real job, then what am I doing exactly with my time? They’re all quick to remind me that nothing is permanent, that every other married couple splits apart sooner or later, and that if I ever find myself disabled after an accident it’s almost guaranteed my husband will abandon both me and our kids.

I know all these people have the best intentions. I’m well aware that you can’t take good health for granted. My husband’s own dad died of cancer while he was still young, and we both know we need to prepare for all sorts of scenarios. But to me there’s quite a difference between making sure we have a backup plan in case of accidents or illness, and planning my whole life around the impending divorce. I’d much rather do everything that’s in my power to keep our marriage happy so that there’s no reason for us to ever consider such option.

Some of my friends think that’s quite naive of me. Nobody plans for a divorce, they say, it just happens sometimes, and you’d better make sure that you don’t get the short end of the stick. But I don’t think I could both keep tabs on my husband and cultivate trust between us at the same time. Given a choice between the two, I’d much rather focus my time and energy on resolving the problems that could lead to major misalignment between us than to plan for what will happen when that misalignment is too serious to repair.

My husband and I have been together for 7 years now. With every passing year we’re learning how to be happier with each other. We communicate with each other better than we used to, navigate more skilfully around sensitive topics, understand what makes the other person feel loved and cared for, and plan together for our future acknowledging everyone’s needs and all sorts of tradeoffs. Before we had a kid we could easily do all of such relationship maintenance in our spare time, but now we found ourselves in a situation where stress began to build up and take a strain on every single one of us and our family as a whole.

I know I’m lucky that I can take some time off to properly unload all that stress. It’s hard to prioritize happiness when you’re worried about survival. But even when my immediate survival wasn’t really at stake, there were years when I felt like I had little influence over my energy levels and mood swings. Only now that I saw how my feeling stressed is causing my daughter to feel stressed too, I realized that it is my personal responsibility to take care of our wellbeing. I can no longer blame it on my moods, stress at work, or other external factors. If I don’t do everything to keep my kid healthy and thriving, then no one will. If I don’t know how to do it while working a real job, then real jobs need to wait until I figure it out.

I know I’m lucky that I can trust my husband to be our sole provider for some extended time. I’d never decide to do this if I wasn’t sure that he intends to stay married with me forever and to always do whatever he believes is best for our whole family. I’m a much happier wife than I ever thought possible, but this didn’t all happen by chance. We’ve both worked very hard to learn how to keep each other and the rest of our family happy, and we’ll probably keep learning that for the rest of our lives. Right now, I’m thankful that I have this chance to make it my full-time job.