Going to be the devil's advocate here, but I know personally that I ended up in a bad place in my career & had no idea that how bad it was was driving us to a breakdown & I pushed myself until that's what it ended up being. It would have been wise of me to take care of myself but my H had lost his job just at that time. It started to hit me around Thanksgiving time that year & by the new year, I was so sick I couldn't go back to work. I kept calling in sick & then the earthquake hit & everything closed down for almost a week & the freeway collapsed between my home & where I worked which only added even more stress when I did try to go back it took me 6 hours just to drive to work a normal 1 1/2 hour drive.

It ended up not mattering whether my H didn't have a job, I had pushed myself to the point where I couldn't function & had a total breakdown. I hadn't lost my mother & there wasn't anything serious that happened in my life other than a long time bad marriage & my career had actually been my escape from that.

The thing is that it didn't matter what financial condition we were in, I had pushed myself in the bad place at work until I mentally & physically couldn't do it any longer. Maybe your SO was trying to actually avoid ending up in the same situation that I ended up in? He did run it by you initially & you just said NO rather than sitting down together & figuring out financially what would REALLY WORK. He went on past that but then finally did drop his hours & did what he knew he needed to do for himself. That was when you got upset & then went over your budget....something you could have done in the first place & saved all the bad feelings in your relationship.

Maybe for me it was the best because I ended up on disability very quickly after that which did give me some amount of money to continue to live on but it didn't cover the bills that we had having both been engineers living on that level of income. He did get a job right at the time of the earthquake also but he had issues & that only lasted for a short while & I was in & out of the mental hospitals at that point with medical expenses that were impossible to pay. Sometimes things happen & we just have to adapt to what is required no matter how bad it is.

Just saying there seems to be this other side that no one seems to be looking at & just making out how possibly bad your SO acted rather than thinking that maybe he really was doing self care if he did decide that his only choice was what he did for his own well being.