I didn't tell my husband I got fired weeks ago, and now it feels impossible to tell him the truth
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- For Love & Money is a biweekly column from Insider answering your relationship and money questions.
- This week, a reader writes they lost their job a month ago and are too embarrassed to tell their husband.
- Our columnist says to tolerate the anxiety, and tell the truth.
- Got a question for our columnist? Write to For Love & Money using this Google form.
Dear Love & Money,
I'm not the primary earner — my husband is — but I've always brought in a solid supplemental income ... up until last month, when I lost my job. I got fired for making an honest mistake, but I've never been fired before and I'm embarrassed. And so, I haven't told my husband.
He works in an office, while my job was remote, and I'm the one who takes care of our finances, so he hasn't noticed anything. But I know the longer this goes on, the bigger of a deal it's going to become that I haven't told him. And for the same reason, it's getting harder for me to imagine ever telling him.
I've been frantically trying to get a new job to soften the blow, but I haven't had any luck so far. My biggest fear is that he's going to check our accounts and notice the absence of my paycheck. Every time I see him on his phone, I'm terrified he is getting on his banking app. I know I need to tell him, but how do I admit this happened over a month ago, and I'm just now telling him about it?
Sincerely,
Avoiding the Talk
Dear Avoiding,
You're in a tough spot. Did you put yourself here? Yes. But I think a lot of us can relate to the feelings that led you here. Because while others in your position might consider going home and crying on their partner's shoulder the most natural thing in the world, people like you and I see confessing our failure as something else — an admission of our true value. A value we worry isn't on par with all the wonderful things we have. It's Impostor Syndrome, but it's about our whole lives.
Outside of this mindset's glaring self-esteem implications, it can majorly impact the health of our relationships. If you believe that lying, finessing, and sneaking around has earned you everything you hold dear, in moments of stress (i.e., losing your job over an honest mistake), your impulse will be to lie, finesse, and sneak around. You didn't want to tell your husband and risk him seeing you as the failure that you fear you are. Then you might lose him.
Except, your husband is not a prize that you must retain at all costs. Your husband is your partner. Your teammate. The person who you should be able to tell everything to without fear, and then, he helps you with it. Unfortunately, just because this is how marriage "should" be, doesn't mean it always is. Some partners cannot be trusted with the brutality of truth. Some spouses will melt down in fear or fury. Sometimes they will punish or panic. Sometimes, knowing this, their partners hide the truth from them to avoid whatever negative blowback they know from experience they're likely to receive.
And often, one person's choice to hide significant truths from the other is a complicated combination of both people being the problem. Maybe your husband wouldn't take your news well, and perhaps you're own unhealthy tendencies are causing you to catastrophize his reaction.
Read more: My wife doesn't care that I need her to get a real job after I got laid off. How do I convince her?
This is often the dynamic in my marriage. My husband struggles with anxiety. So, when we get bad news, he typically needs a few days to shake his fist at the universe and sigh over the ways I probably caused this. It's infuriating, even hurtful, but is it the end of the world? No. But when I am in an unhealthy place, it feels like it might be. And like you, my instinct is to try and mitigate the truth rather than simply telling it. So I'm going to give you the same advice my therapist gave me: tolerate the anxiety, and tell the truth.
Tell your husband that you've got some hard news to share, and then tell him. Don't wait for him to ask you, "When did this happen?" Give him the date in your opening statement. Say something along the lines of, "About a month ago, I lost my job. I haven't told you because I've been too embarrassed."
I know what you want right now is for your husband to wrap his arms around you and tell you that everything is going to be okay, and maybe even get angry at your ex-employers on your behalf. I hope for your sake this is exactly how it goes.
But it might not. He might dwell on is how long it took you to tell him. He might grill you over the mistake that led to your firing. He might sigh deeply and say he'll have to get a second job to make up for the loss of income. The thing is, he's human. He will deal with it the way he needs to deal with it.
Chances are, tolerating his response will be painful for you because it sounds from your letter like you're ashamed of getting fired. Which means any response that isn't 100% comfort and reassurance will likely feel like someone has you by the jaw and is rubbing your face in your failure. This will hurt. It always does. But remember what's true: You hold intrinsic value, and that's why you deserve the life you have. Getting fired a dozen times won't change that.
That said, maybe your husband's response will be much worse than I've guessed. If this is the case, and your husband is such a monster every time he gets bad news that you've begun hiding things from him to protect your safety, I would encourage you to think long and hard about the safety of having him in your life at all.
No matter why you chose to hide this information, however, it's time to come clean. I know it's scary, but look beyond the big reveal and any ensuing argument. There may be no way out but through, but you will get through this.
Rooting for you,
For Love & Money