Maybe we should sit and agree to specific jobs. Then at least when he's home I know to focus on what I need to get done and I can just leave him to his. It will be like asking him to do x, y, or z, but only asking him the one time and then having an understanding that it always will need to get done...maybe?

I'm feeling a little better today. When I get really pent up about these kinds of things (whether related to him, to my moods, to my work, or whatever else), I really need an outlet to let it all out, even the things I would never want to say out loud to someone. I try to be really careful of his feelings - I never want to say something that I'll regret or that he can't unhear unless I'm absolutely certain there's no way to maintain a healthy relationship without addressing it. That's the biggest part of the reason I need so much space/time to react when I get really upset or angry.

When I can get it all out here, it relieves a lot of that frustration for me. I try not to do that with people in my life too much, because I don't want to speak negatively about my husband to our friends or family.

My big hope here is that once he figures out a new equilibrium at work, he can return more of his attention to our family and home. It would be nice to feel like he wants to be engaged with us again. I really don't think he realizes how his perseveration on the work issues, and his responses to that stress, translate at home to the kids and I feeling like there's no room in his consideration for us.

As a side note, it's particularly stressful in our home right now because my husband is looking at other jobs in his agency to get away from his current situation. These jobs would necessitate us moving. He has asked me whether he should even look at the other positions, or if moving is absolutely out of the question. My challenge is that it's not out of the question (I don't think there's much in life that ever is) - but it would be terribly disruptive to our family. My son is struggling to manage his emotions, largely (according to his therapist) because he needs to feel connected to the people around him in order to thrive. That sense of connection is harder for him to maintain than most people. We're working on this, but uprooting him from his friends, school and community will not help. Our daughter just had her first day of middle school. She's far more resilient than our son, but she's got deep roots in terms of friends, extracurriculars, etc. She's devastated at the idea of leaving. And then for me - I'm generally introverted and have a hard time making deep connections to people. It takes me a lot of time to establish my 'tribe', and once I do I tend to maintain one or two deep friendships that feel like family. These people become my support network, since we don't live near family and my husband is gone or unreliable (due to work schedule) a lot. In addition to that, if we move, it's likely I would have to quit my job, which basically facilitates our lifestyle right now, including the flexibility required to ensure he can do the work he does. Despite all that, I don't feel like I can tell him it's an absolute 'no' to move; ultimately, life taught me early on that whatever else happens you just adapt and keep doing the next thing. We COULD move. We COULD reestablish a new community around us. We COULD figure out how to handle the fallout of uprooting our lives and transplanting to a new place. We would probably be unhappy for some time, then we would figure it out.

So I won't say 'no' to the whole idea, but I'm frustrated because I feel like this has been coming for a couple of years - my husband is not someone who knows how to be content. He is always looking over the fence for the next opportunity. He always thinks the grass is greener elsewhere. I've known this about him for a long time. He gets bored easily. We talked about this when we decided to move here - I didn't want to at the time, but he sold me on it saying that this was a place with enough to do for him professionally that we could be here until our kids were out of school. We have 11 more years until that time, but he's always itching to go somewhere else and try something new. The acute situation at his work is kind of like that match that lit the fuel pile that's been gathering for awhile. I don't particularly want to spend my life establishing a home/life where he lands, then uprooting it when he gets bored and starting again elsewhere. I already gave up my opportunity to have a vibrant career; I work part-time for an agency doing work I don't much care for that isn't engaging, but it allows me the freedom to work from home mostly and schedule my own hours so that I can be around when the kids are out of school and I can manage all the appointments and things that pop up. I get paid around 70% or so of what I should, which is something I accept in exchange for the freedom to work the way I do. If I leave this job, I don't know if I'll ever find this kind of flexibility again, and I won't have the salary history to negotiate for what I'm worth. I also haven't branched out of my field enough to be competitive in many areas, so unless what I do now is available wherever we land, I'm likely looking at a significant reduction in pay for more hours and less flexibility. When I've brought these points up to him, he responds that he's stressed at work without effective leadership (this is temporary - they're in the hiring process right now), and he's not confident in his abilities in his position - he was hired with the understanding that he would be sufficiently trained up, but they didn't allocate the resources to accomplish that, so he's picked up what he could along the way but still doesn't have enough time in practice to feel confident. There's no reason to believe that the training/practice time for him will increase, so he doesn't feel like he's got anywhere to go from here.

I understand where he's coming from, but all I take to heart is that he doesn't want to keep doing what he's doing right now, so he'd like for me to say it's OK to move our whole family several states away to try something new and shiny. Every job change he's gone through has followed this pattern: it seems exciting to try, he gets the position, he likes the environment, some other personnel change happens and he then can't stand someone he's working with (i.e., the person(s) that made it fun for him to go to work every day move/retire/etc.), he thinks another job would be better, and repeat. He even mentioned that one of the places he is looking at has the benefit of a guy he likes working with in that office for about another 6 years before he retires. So while he says all the things about better working conditions, a position that affords him the opportunity to do more/better for his agency, professional fulfillment, etc. - the net effect I hear is that his friends at work left and now he wants to move somewhere that he can work with another friend. I don't think he sees it that way at all, but that's been true for the last 3 positions he's held.

Sorry I sort of went off for awhile on this one - there are clearly several issues at play that are contributing to my sense of not being connected to and prioritized by my husband. I really just feel defeated right now, though, and that as soon as one of these other positions flies (somewhere in the next 4-6 months), we'll start the process of moving again. I feel resigned, because even when we talk about things like this, I just end up feeling steam-rolled by him. And I don't feel like I can withstand going through the turmoil of arguing with him about anything, much less a decision this large. If I have to sob my way through a 4-hour session with him on why I'm mad about a couple of incidents in our day-to-day lives, I can't imagine how dramatically painful he'll make something like this.