The Vine: June 9, 2010
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*****
When my husband and I take a cab with a single friend of ours who happens to live nearby, do we pay 50 percent of the cab fare since we are going to the same destination? Or do we split it in thirds because there are three of us?
Thank you.
Out in the Boondocks
Dear Boon,
In thirds. If you and two other single friends took the same cab, how would you split it? Or if you, your husband, and the single friend ordered a pizza? In thirds. There isn’t always a volume discount for sharing a household; sometimes the 50-50 couple math works (two identical hotel rooms at a wedding), but sometimes it doesn’t (the rental car to get there).
With that said, it’s cabfare; it tends to even out over time. But let me put it another way: if the three of you were getting paid to take that cab, instead of paying, how would you want that divided? …Yeah. In thirds.
Sars,
I’ve been thinking about sending this question to you (and the readers!) for a long time. Put bluntly, how do you help, or convince, someone who’s been working on a dissertation for over eight years to either get the thing done or to put it aside and focus on finding full-time employment?
Here’s the story: I met my husband in graduate school, where I was working on my master’s degree and he was just beginning his PhD program. After I finished my master’s I moved back home, and we had a long-distance relationship for about a year while he completed his course work and comprehensive exams. Once that was done, we got married and he moved to the city where I live (which is about 11 hours away from the university).
At this point, he was ABD [“stands for ‘all but dissertation'” — SDB], so he got a job waiting tables, which seemed to pay better than retail, and offered more flexible hours. The idea was that he’d work at the restaurant 4-5 evenings a week and have his days free to research and write. I got a cubicle job for a big corporation, making decent money, paying into a 401k, getting good benefits, getting vacation and sick time, etc.
I thought, and he did too, that this way of life would last a few years — three? four? — while he wrote the dissertation, defended, and got out there to look for a job in academia. The subject area he’s working in is one that seems to offer real potential for finding an academic job: more and more colleges and universities are expanding their programs in this field, and he’s got some good contacts at various locations.
The problem is that, over eight years later, we are still doing this. He’s still waiting tables (the restaurant has changed, but that’s about it), and I am still stuck in a cubicle. I’m feeling trapped; I feel like I can’t possibly make a move or try anything different where I might be making less money because we rely so heavily on my current salary. And it’s not just my salary; it’s the health benefits, too. I feel like I’m carrying that burden alone.
In all these years, his salary has not increased. In fact, it tends to go down at certain times, because his salary is mostly based on his tips. Much of the money from his paychecks (which are never very much anyway — servers make $3.35 an hour) goes to taxes. And I’m not trying to say that waiting tables isn’t a “real” job — he works hard. Serving can be tough, and I wish (and I know he does too) that he was putting all that effort and energy into working hard at the job he wants to have.
I am so frustrated about so many aspects of this. I’d like to help him finish, but we’ve never been able to make that work. I’m his wife, not his taskmaster, and even though we’ve sat down before and worked out schedules and such, those have never stuck. I was hoping the university might have a cut-off date for PhD candidates (most universities seem to have a ten-year limit), thus forcing the issue. However, it turns out that at this particular university, since he withdrew from his program in good standing (because he withdrew, we haven’t had to pay any tuition fees), he can re-enroll any time.
He has occasionally tried to find a full-time job, but, you know, times have been tough, and his only work experience has been waiting tables, which doesn’t help much when interviewing for office jobs. He did get a position for one term teaching a class at a local university, and had a great experience there. I was really hoping that that might do it — might give him the push he needed to finish, once he fully realized what he was missing and what he could be doing. That was last year, though, and…still nothing. It’s still not done, and, as far as I can tell (I haven’t seen the actual dissertation in quite a while), the four chapters that are currently incomplete are the same chapters that have been unfinished for years.
I don’t know what to do, and, I think, neither does he. He feels guilty, and he’s not happy waiting tables, and he tends to get very defensive when I bring up the situation. I haven’t been handling it very well either, lately — I’m coming off angry and resentful, which doesn’t make for productive discussions. I’ve been thinking about doing some couples counseling, which would probably be beneficial in other ways as well.
So, I’m hoping for some advice. I absolutely do not want to be the person who made him give up on his dream (not that he’s ever accused me of such a thing), but there has to be some kind of cut-off, doesn’t there? At the same time, though, I want him to finish, I know he can finish, I just don’t know how we can make that happen.
Needing some sort of resolution
Dear Rez,
I agree that couples counseling is a good idea, because despite your best joint intentions, you have become the mommy on the issue, which is a set-up you both resent.
In the meantime, reframe the discussion so that it’s no longer about him “behaving” (I doubt this is how you talk about it with him, or even how you consciously think about it, but it’s probably how he perceives it regardless) — so that it’s no longer about him at all. Right now, the entire problem is couched as “if he…then I,” and it’s time to flip it. What about if…you? What do you want to do instead of jocking a cubicle? What dream did you give up on to support you both for eight years?
It’s time to make it about that — to stick to “I statements” and tell him that, you know, you don’t want to make him walk away from the dissertation. You don’t want to “make him” walk away from or towards it, or do anything else; “make him” is not supposed to be your role. The thing is, you want to walk away from the cubicle farm — want to, and are going to, in X timeframe, and in order for you as a couple to pay rent and eat food, he is going to have to make some decisions and hit some deadlines of his own so that that can happen. How he gets that done is up to him, and you will happily help him with it, or not, but after eight years, you have to make it about you or you feel like you’ll drown.
Look, I’m all for couples banding together as teams, one swimming while the other floats for a while, and then switching off. But I don’t see the teamwork here. I see you sucking it up for the team, and I see him not making the necessary changes because getting defensive backs you off, and as important as sharing and teamwork is in a couple, it’s just as important that each individual member of the couple takes responsibility for his or her shit. A spouse is not a parent; a spouse is not a fairy godmother or -father. A spouse can’t fix your life, or live it for you.
Take a couple of sessions with a counselor, absolutely, but in the service of learning to say not just “this isn’t working” — which he can interpret as meaning “…because of you,” and just shut down — but “this isn’t working for me, so I have decided to make the following changes.” But you have to learn to have these discussions as a couple; he has to learn to hear your frustration without immediately making it about him, or feeling insulted; you have to learn how to express, and go for, what you need in a way that doesn’t make him feel like he has no say in things.
For eight years, your financial life as a couple has revolved around him. That needs to stop. Whatever that means for his dissertation, it means, and he’ll have to handle it or not, but the focus needs to shift from you supporting him to the two of you supporting each other, because if it doesn’t, it’s not a partnership. It’s an internship.
Hi Sarah and the Tomato Nation:
I am having some difficulty with my older sister’s upcoming wedding. For a brief background, my sister met her now fiancé online, were engaged within two months of meeting (online and third or fourth in-person date) and will be married a little over a year from first meeting.
When I found out about the engagement, I was shocked by the speed, as my sister in the past has been very particular about dating and life in general. I brought up concerns about this to our parents and they became very defensive, saying it was my sister’s choice and how my mother “just wanted me to happy for her and for all of us to get along.”
Word got to my sister and she insinuated that maybe I should not be the maid of honor, which she initially asked me to be. I made several rounds of apologies and have since done my best to be a supportive as possible. I have also met the fiancé and he seems to be a genuinely good person.
Since this, I have found out my parents are paying for the entire wedding. I recently got married myself, and it was very important for me and my husband to pay for our wedding. We were dating for about two years but had a short engagement before our wedding, which was a civil ceremony and a large dinner for friends and family.
For full disclosure, my parents did offer to help, but my parents and I have had issue with money in the past. In college, they were giving me pay part of my rent but cut me off over my choices to do things they did not approve (read bad boyfriend, drinking, etc.). Since then, I have refused any money from them because I do not want the expectation that I will do what they want me to do, and while my relationship has been strained with my family in the past, we have all worked very hard in repairing it.
So I understand the conditions for them paying for my sister’s wedding and the better relationship my sister has with my parents. They did give us a very generous wedding gift, but by comparison, it would likely only cover the photographer for my sister’s wedding. While I understand the circumstances of my sister’s wedding are very different from mine, I still feel very resentful of the situation.
Ultimately, I know that whatever agreement my sister and parents have come to about the wedding is their own business and not my concern. The circumstances of the wedding, especially the speed, means my sister or her fiancé have saved no money for it. Even though my mother has said people will think they have spent a lot more money than they actually did, the total cost will still be several magnitudes above what my husband and I were able to afford and do for the same thing. Now looking at my sister’s registry, she is requesting enough things to outfit two houses. All of this is compounded by my parents having to take a loan out during this time to do absolutely necessary home repairs.
How do I come to a personal peace about this? Logically, it all makes perfect sense and I understand that my sister and parents believe what they are doing is fine, which: I totally disagree. Now with the wedding coming up, I would like to fully enjoy the festivities and not harbor any resentment, but I am having a very difficult time coming to terms with the situation. If you or the Tomato Nation could help me find a new perspective on this, I would be very grateful.
Maid of resentment
Dear Maid,
Take ownership of the choice you made; cast it in a positive light. You resent the arrangement your sister has with your parents because you equate your parents’ investment in her wedding with the amount of their love she gets. It isn’t wrong to feel that way, in the sense that it’s “incorrect,” because some parents do apportion their love that way, unfortunately.
But in your parents’ case, this is also how they maintain control over their adult children, and you chose not to engage with them on that level. I think that’s a smart decision on your part, although it sounds like it caused a few problems between you. Your sister, meanwhile, has chosen to accept their generosity, but that also means accepting their rules — their control of the guest list, their menu suggestions, their interference.
The next time you find yourself seething about the perceived inequity, ask yourself if you’d have wanted to do things your sister’s way — understanding that it isn’t possible for your parents, apparently, to support you financially without also requiring your actions to meet with their approval. Is that what you wanted? Is that what you want now? Your sister isn’t writing the checks for her wedding, but believe me, she’s paying…or maybe she isn’t. It’s difficult to explain what I mean here, but speaking as an older sibling myself, our understanding of the parental politics is usually a little different from yours, to wit: historically, you got more attention, but we got more credit, if that makes any sense. So, it’s a little easier for us to give ground in a situation like this, because parents tend to get less stalled out at thinking we’re still children than they do with you.
And even twins aren’t exactly the same person; some people can put up with parental control-freaking better than others. It’s not a contest, is the key point, and you have to remind yourself of that. Your sister gets the wedding paid for; you got to tell your parents to step off when you felt like it. You’re different people with different priorities, and you can look at the familial relationships and understand where your sister might be coming from, but without reverting to that time in both your lives when every piece of cake had to be divided exactly in half.
I know this kind of thing is frustrating and can seem terribly unfair, but you have to realize that there’s nothing you can do about it: this is just how your parents behave. It isn’t your fault, it isn’t your sister’s fault, and resenting your sister — or that she has her own mechanisms for dealing with your parents’ ungenerous need to tie control to approval — won’t change anything. Try talking to your sister instead, asking how it’s going with the planning and really listening to the answers; find common ground with her, instead of comparing everything along negative axes or framing it as that she’s “getting away with” something. Make it about all the bullshit you don’t have to tolerate, put yourself on the same side as she is, and see how you feel.
Tags: boys (and girls) etiquette the fam workplace
For Rez, finishing a dissertation is ridiculously daunting under the best of circumstances (I took 7 years past course work/comps myself and I was on campus and not married so thus centrally devoted to the thing). If your husband is 11 hours away from his grad cohort and professors, then he needs to be entirely self-motivated and that’s hard. But it doesn’t sound like he is self-motivated, which is understandable. What isn’t okay is you financially supporting the family and being miserable while doing so.
Sars is right that you need to frame things as your own timeline for changes in your own life. And perhaps also let hubby know that it’s okay for him not to finish the diss. Far too many ABD grad students get stuck in the pattern you describe and spend years lamenting it, while not really doing anything to change their circumstances. In these cases, cutting one’s losses alleviates a lot of unnecessary guilt, pain and suffering. But doing that is hard – it’s giving up on a dream (even if that dream has become more a nightmare), and it’s accepting on some level that you have ‘failed’ to complete what you thought you wanted to do.
Your changes and timelines can coincide, though. Why not move back to university town? If you want a change and a new job, this could be the thing to inspire you. Hubby can re-enroll in school (perhaps?) and be motivated in a setting that inspires it. That may not work out for him, but paying to stay enrolled has a way of encouraging either production or acceptance of not finishing.
If this isn’t at all practical or possible, then move forward with your own timeline of changes and articulate what it is that YOU want to do. Then discuss how to make that possible and leave his unfinished dissertation out of the conversation completely.
Rez,
I left my Master’s program with everything but my thesis completed. I have a very hard time with self-directed projects, my advisor retired, plus I was working a 9-5 job. I would never have gotten my degree if I hadn’t signed on with an academic coach. Obviously, a dissertation is at least several degrees of magnitude more involved than a thesis, but the same work methods should still be effective.
Of course… a coach needs to be paid, but that might actually work in your favor, as far as setting a deadline goes.
I hope it’s OK to recommend my former coach. Lynn Meyer-Gay (http://www.meyergay.com/meyergay/dissertco.html) did an excellent job for me. Dissertation coaching is one of her specialties. I’m sure that there are other good academic coaches out there, as well. There may even be one with experience in your husband’s area of research (although it’s more about how to work through the project than about the specific topic).
Tanget question regarding the advice for Rez-
I hear therapists and advice columnists regularly recommend bringing up and discussing these kinds of couples issues with “I” statements…
I tried this once and was called “selfish” for only seeing the issues as they affect me. What do you with this?
@sj: “Noooo, fuck YOU, dickhead!”
…No? Okay: I think you point out, in a less yelly way than I could, that your use of “I statements” is intended to avoid sounding accusatory and blamey. It’s not selfish; it’s taking responsibility. I mean, obviously you see the issues best in the ways they affect you; we all do. If your conversation partner is going to deliberately be a victim…
To Resolution:
As a relatively recent Ph.D. (albeit one in what is clearly a very different discipline), I have several comments to make.
First, I know you have a sense of this already, but finishing a Ph.D. is hard work. It requires a ton of motivation and dedicated time. It sounds to me like your husband may be lacking in both. One of the things that really helped me to finish was imposing an external deadline on myself. I told my parents at Christmas of 2008 that they should buy their plane tickets out for graduation in May. That meant that I had to get the darn thing submitted no later than mid-March and defend it in mid-April with a week to make corrections. I managed to make the deadlines because the thoughts of $1000 worth of plane tickets were running through my head. There are other possible deadlines to use, such as a proper academic job search, which I’ll talk about briefly in a moment.
Second, a lot of Ph.D. candidates experience depression/anxiety and/or imposter syndrome, any of which slow down progress. Seeing a good therapist and taking appropriate medications may make a difference.
Lastly, the academic job search. It is often customary to begin academic job searches ABD. This is potentially a good idea as it will help him get his materials in order (every school wants a little something different–a teaching philosophy, a research statement, a writing sample, who knows what else, CV tweaked by institution type). It may also light a fire, as mentioned above, because the market is abysmal right now, and its my understanding that the ABDs getting hired are those that have a firm defense date in mind (and vouched for by the advisor in the letter of recommendation). (Also, he’ll get paid more both in the short and long term if he gets hired with Ph.D. in hand, as he’ll start as Assistant Prof. instead of Lecturer/Instructor.) If he does conduct such a search, you will both have to remember that you may not end up with a lot of discretion about where you end up geographically (this is generally true even when the market is a bit better). This will be another thing to not get discouraged about. It is taking many very good candidates several years to find TT (tenure-track) jobs these days.
Best of luck to him and to you.
Maid-
Speaking from the ‘younger sister getting married in 5 months perspective’ (while things differ because my parents did also pay for my sister’s wedding) I can second that your sister’s life isn’t all rose petals and photographers right now – as generous as the gift is, and no matter how incredibly, incredibly grateful we are for it… it’s hard. and it’s brought forth a lot of issues with my relationship with my parents, especially concerning my (and my fiancee’s) relationship with money vs. their relationship with money.
Not that I’m trying to say that it’s harder than what you feel and that your feelings aren’t valid, but maybe – if you see that your sister is starting to feel that strain – maybe this is a time you can bond with her. like “Look, I went through this ‘cutting ties’ thing with mom & dad, too. Talk to me about it – I’ve been there, maybe I can help.”
And I also think it’s true that my relationship with my parents is very different than my sister’s just on the nature of birth order, so that is also valid. Fact is, weddings are stressful – no matter how or who or when it gets paid for… Finding the silver lining in that you DIDN’T have to live under your parents’ microscope every time you spent money for a year – awesome for you. Good luck.
@ Sars – Your take is depressingly spot-on.
And in fact, I think that argument actually stemmed from me feeling like he does act the victim at times and trying to frame the conversation so as not to imply that it was deliberate (because it’s not totally… he does have some medical problems that cause him a lot of pain), but rather to state what the effect of that behavior was whatever the motivation. The martyr thing doesn’t happen all the time, but if I had to pick the most unpleasant tendency in my (usually wonderful) fiancee, that’s it.
It may sound harsh but… If Maid’s parents offered to pay for Maid’s wedding and Maid said no, then she really doesn’t have a right to bitch about them paying for Sister’s wedding. She had her chance and she passed – even if her reasons for passing on the money were legitimate (i.e. controlling parents), she still said NO. She can’t fault her sister for saying YES.
@Amy: I think she understand that she doesn’t have the “right” to bitch. She feels how she feels, though, and what she actually asked is how she gets past the resentment to enjoy the wedding. Sibling competition goes back to before we even have memories; it’s not as cut-and-dried as all that.
@Maid: I’m just speculating here, based on what I read in your letter–but I’m kind of thinking that when you told your parents about the marriage, you made “me and husband are paying for everything ourselves” a big part of the conversation right away. It’s not as though you said “please help us out financially with the wedding” and they replied “okay but you have to do this-or-that” and so you said “well nevermind”. You made it clear that you had a lot of personal-actualization stuff wrapped up in paying for the wedding yourselves, and your parents honored that.
sj & Sars-
Great follow up question and response! I too have been frustrated by attempting to use the “I” statements. To be fair this has sometimes been my own fault because you can amazingly manipulate an I statement into not really being about the “I” at all. That aside, I’ve found that the victim mentality or role or what have you is the most difficult to deal with when you are trying to take responsibility for something. You’re putting in all this effort to not blame and to approach it fairly and getting nowhere. I would find I would get resentful that the person wasn’t doing what I was doing..if I can be all mature and take responsibility why can’t they? ;) The woe is me, everything happens to me schtick gets old very, very quickly so I’m glad sj that your fiancee has wonderful qualities to balance it out.
However I still think it’s a good way not only to talk to your partner but to begin reframing things in your own mind. Sometimes being mindful of using “I” statements makes you take a step back and say wait a minute, what am I really feeling and why am I doing such and such?
@Rez,
I can’t tell what your husband’s field is from the letter, but if it’s remotely in the biosciences, (including statistics or epidemiology), pre-doctoral grants could be a way to fund his research and maybe give him/you both a little more of a deadline, some structure, and financial breathing room. The NIH funds some of these, as does FDA. There are probably other agencies, too, but these are the ones I know offhand. Best of luck!
Rez, I think something that might help you guys reform as a team (within the confines of a counselor’s office, ideally, to set boundries and such) is try to remember what you two have in common in this dilemma: to wit, you both don’t like where you are, jobwise.
You hate the cubicle farm and the feeling that the excitement of academics is behind you, along with your ability to think deeply, engage, etc. He hates the sheer hard labor combined with the armchair psychology that is waiting tables. Both of you probably feel physically exhausted and mentally drained at the end of a day, and the whole “IF ONLY you’d finish the damn thing we could blow this pop stand and zoom off to AwesomeLand” balloon is floating over your marriage, casting a huge shadow. It’s not the best thing to have in common, but it’s there for both of you.
I’m not saying you should jointly wallow in misery forever, but acknowledging it may actually provide the both of you with the spur you need to start making changes.
It also seems like the Dissertation has become a combination of the key to the promised land and He Who Must Not Be Named. As Niki, above, pointed out, your spouse could get a better job with the dissertation finished, but he doesn’t have to wait until then to rejoin academia. Your letter feels like the Dissertation is holding you both hostage, and you don’t “deserve” to move on in any way until it’s done, you don’t “deserve” good things or career respect without its kiss of approval shining from your foreheads. Not so.
Start a savings account and make deposits in it regularly. When you hit a certain number, quit your jobs and move back to a campus, where he has landed a job in his field, even if it wasn’t his dream job. It may spur him on to finish or not, but you’ll be doing something you like doing for a change, without your lives being chained to some Promethean rock and the Dreaded D tearing at your livers.
To Resolution:
I’m sure this isn’t what you want to hear, and it’s not fair, but: you and he may both have a wildly exaggerated view of his employability in academia.
I’m in a top 5 program in my field, and fully half of our newly minted Ph.D.s this year did not get tenure track job offers. My social science field isn’t the hardest hit by budget cuts; those are humanities and area-studies fields.
There are jobs out there, of course, but if your husband has been cut off from his university for all these years without making any progress (which I presume also means not publishing other materials, presenting his work in progress at conferences, etc), he might not be at the top of the list to get them.
If you want to gauge your husband’s employability, the first thing I would do is look at where the people who’ve graduated from his PhD program in the last two years got jobs (not just the one or two best-employed people the program wants to brag about, but all the graduates), and compare his CV to yours. Of course, you might decide that doing that puts you back in the role of managing his future, and that you don’t wish to do this.
If it’s the case that his prospects of employment as a full-time professor, in a job with health care and retirement benefits, are dim, then I imagine that acknowledging that will be very painful. On the other hand, like another commenter mentioned, it might also be very freeing. It means he, like you, has to figure out what he actually wants to do with his life.
Re: “I” statements.
It’s also important for it to actually be an “I” statement. “I wonder why you’re such a tool” isn’t exactly what they’re talking about…
@Rez: Do any of the local universities offer a “dissertation boot camp” that your husband could take advantage of? The Writing Center at the university where I did my Ph.D. holds boot camps several times a year (summer break, winter break, spring break). You sign up for a nominal fee (to cover snacks/lunch, usually), but you have a dedicated space to work and sometimes advisers to offer feedback on what you’ve done so far. The deal is usually 8 hours a day for one to two weeks. While these boot camps are often advertised only to students currently enrolled at a university, your husband might be able to ask his dissertation adviser to intercede on his behalf. After this much time, he may be feeling that he barely remembers half the material he’s researched, and having a clear but time-bound commitment to work on getting his head back into the data may help (she says, after letting her research sit dormant for longer than she should have). Good luck!
@Rez — I would question how much your husband truly *wants* a career as an academic. In some sense, his behavior seems like the best indication of his desires — and while he may not really be enjoying the waitstaff work, the fact that teaching a class was not enough to motivate him suggests to me that life as a professor really isn’t all that inspiring to him. I just wonder if he feels like he has permission to not want to be an academic, to want to take his life in a different direction. My husband got a Ph.D. and then decided to go in a totally different direction, in part because I saw that academic life didn’t make him particularly happy and gently brought that fact up… It took him a long time to accept that he could value what he took away from the Ph.D. process without necessarily having to continue to make academics his life.
Anyway — it just might be something worth exploring… Not to mention that honestly, in the current publish or perish academic environment, if it takes him eight years to write his dissertation, that doesn’t bode well for being able to be successful even if he’s ultimately hired as a professor.
@Grainger: Yes, of course. “I think you suck” is not the idea. But they’re pretty good for a situation like this one — “I feel trapped in my job and would like to move on,” versus “your failure to finish your dissertation is why I have to” blah blah.
Rez:
An earlier commenter said this in passing, but I think it deserves even more attention: if you don’t care if he finishes the dissertation, please tell him so.
I’m a dissertator myself (only 2 years in, with a plan to finish in another 2), but I have many many many friends who have taken all different lengths of time (from one year to ten) to finish. I also have a very close friend who was technically dissertating while teaching as a visiting professor for 6 years…and then he realized he didn’t like that field, didn’t like that project, and was really interested in something else. So he went back to grad school and now has a PhD in a different field–and a dissertation he finished in less than a year.
I think it’s entirely possible–and maybe even likely–that your husband wants to officially abandon the notion that he’s going to finish this dissertation. If this is how he feels, I can only begin to imagine the crushing guilt he must be experiencing. Years of asking you to put your life on hold to help him realize his dream…and now he doesn’t want that dream after all? Horrifying, and probably paralyzing for him, also. If I’d come to this realization, I would have a very hard time telling my husband–who has always been really supportive, and told me expressly that it’s OK if I can’t or don’t want to finish. If that had never been said, I don’t think I could do it–but I wouldn’t know how to move forward, either.
My advice? Sit down with him and have an open heart-to-heart about what’s going on. What is the real situation here? Tell him that it’s OK if his plans and dreams have changed, but that you have to get on the same page so you can move forward together. Be honest with him, as Sars said, about what YOU want–what YOU need to do to be happy, and then figure out what the two of you can do–together–to both have happy, fulfilled lives.
Good luck to you! Believe me when I say that I can empathize with you both.
@Rez – lots of questions have been raised here about whether your husband even wants to finish, so this advice may or may not be useful for him. But when I was writing a doctoral dissertation while also holding down a job, this is how I did it: two pages per day.
It didn’t matter if they were two crappy pages, because I could always go back and edit them afterward. Two pages didn’t take too long to write — if I was agonizing over every word, at least I had a reachable goal.
If I was totally inspired and wanted to keep going, I would just jot down some quick notes about where to go next, and still stop after two pages. That saved me from “well, I wrote four pages yesterday so I’ll skip today, and maybe tomorrow, and.” I gave myself Saturdays off, and otherwise kept going. Usually I did my writing before I went to work.
The academic job market is godawful right now; your husband may indeed be discouraged, intimidated, or just disappointed and frustrated beyond belief. I think Sars’s advice about setting deadlines for the changes you (and he) want to make is dead on. Good luck to you both!
I have been told there’s a book titled “Finish Your Dissertation in 15 Minutes a Day.” God, I hope such a thing is possible.
Rez, I am in the same position as your husband, minus seven years and any sort of idea what to write a dissertation on, plus full-time stay-at-home-mom responsibilities. Sars’s advice sounds spot-on. If my husband were feeling trapped, (a) I’d want to know, and (b) I’d need some help not feeling like a useless sponge. (In truth, he’s floated the idea of me quitting — I need to try this “withdraw gracefully and not have to pay $2500 a year for the privilege of not getting much done” trick).
If it helps with the thinking, the fact that his dissertation is the block is to some degree irrelevant to your being trapped. If he were a SAHD; if he had a health problem; if he’d been laid off, etc., etc., you’d still be in the position of dependency on your job and your health benefits. I wouldn’t necessary say that to him, since he might not appreciate your equating not finishing the dissertation to being unemployed when he’s been working all this time. But it might help you, in thinking, “Okay, what do *I* need to do to feel less trapped and resentful?” to take the focus away from his not finishing.
One last thing: Versatile PhD is a website devoted to people who started out in academia but ended up on a different career path. If the problem is that your husband needs a way out to another field and doesn’t see one, there would be plenty of resources for him there. But I say if because it sounds more likely, from your description, that he’ll love his field once he can get back into the swing of things.
I wish both of you luck.
Sars, your answer to Maid is spot on. If only I had had access to you (or someone with your insight) 20 years ago.
I would add that Maid could be really happy down the road when her parents start complaining about whatever the sister &/or husband are doing with their money. In retrospect, I am so happy to have taken care of myself over the years because I earned my parents respect and they treat me like an adult that they trust.
I think Maid should be grateful for that. And on a purely financial level, it is entirely possible her parents will keep track now and even it out later. My experience is, if people show love (& control) with money, they keep track. (Hi mom!)
“Noooo, fuck YOU, dickhead!”
This completely, completely cracked me up. An excellent example of a “you statement.”
@Rez – I am just about through to the other side of your problem. Honestly, as I read your letter, I wondered if I wrote it and then developed amnesia (swap “dissertation” for “starting his own company”).
For a couple of years I watched my husband -not- work to build his business while I put in ridiculously long days to make sure our bills got paid. I don’t know if it’s at all helpful, but one of the biggest issues for me was frustration at his apparent attitude that it was perfectly fine for me to slave away at something short of my dream job so that he could putter around chasing his. Acknowledging that frustration made it easier to deal with and easier to see that it wasn’t the case.
What was holding him back was a fear of failure. That hasn’t been mentioned that I see, but I think it’s a definite possibility. He got stuck in the mind set of “what if I do everything I’m supposed to do, talk to all the right people, make the right connections, etc. and this still doesn’t work?” Yours might be in the same position. What if he gets that PhD and still can’t find a job? What if he’s never able to give you the chance to chase your dreams as you’ve done for him? Those thoughts can be paralyzing. It’s worth considering, and it’s worth discussing.
Yet another plug for couples therapy. It has helped us tremendously by giving us a safe place to have these conversations and by giving us the tools and vocabulary to make sure they’re productive. Even one truly AWFUL counselor ended up being helpful by giving us a clear route into the conversation we needed to have (that route started with discussions of how completely she missed the point of everything we said).
Good luck. For what it’s worth, we came through to the other side stronger than ever.
For Rez – Wow, do I sympathize with the albatross that is past research that still needs to be written up. It sometimes helps to break it down into much smaller tasks that can be accomplished each day or week. For me, the hardest part is just opening excel and word.
I’m not sure if the PhD would be in a science related field but if it is, it’s may be hard to overcome the idea that the only route available is the one you mentioned – PhD, postdoc, academia. This is a tough path to follow in the current academic environment and sometimes loses its appeal along the way (long hours, low pay, grant writing cycles…). There is a book called Alternative Careers in Science by Cynthia Robbins-Roth that might help your husband to realize that a PhD can lead to a number of other less intense jobs.
About the “I” statements: this works great after you both get the hang of it. The fastest way to do that is by having almost any personal discussion (but something with some emotion is better) IN FRONT OF someone who really understands how it works – when it works. Most therapists, some ministers, even some friends who learned it from a friend can serve this function. It took my spouse and me about 2 practice sessions and 2 real arguments with adviser before we understood how to make it work for us. I was the slow one– I kept making “I” and feeling statements of the general form:
I understand that you think you told me about that ahead of time, but you are WRONG! And I feel that when you admit that, everything will be fine.
Trust me, that kind of “I” statement is not the goal.
(I’m better now, really.)
Res: I also have a spouse who is ABD. He is psychologically able to work on it and make progress if he takes of big chunks of time from work – but we are talking a minimum of a week at a time. If his pattern continues, it will take either one solid month with him working only on the dissertation, and ignoring his job, or 8 weeks (if he does this 1 week per month.) What I am getting to, slowly, is that your spouse is contributing so little to the finances, and spending so little time on the dissertation, that it might be better for him to quit working a job for a month or 2, and only work on the dissertation.
Maid,
I’m not yet in a similar position, but I can easily see how one day I will be. When I was 18, I moved out on my own because the conditions of living with my parents and taking money from them weren’t conditions I could live with. Same thing goes for college, and the same thing goes for my wedding in two months. I know the situation will be entirely different for my little brother. He will have his housing and college paid for. He will have his wedding at least mostly paid for. However, I also get to have my wedding and my college and my life be exactly the way I want it to be. When I wanted to switch to a program at a different college no one could tell me no because it was my money (or at least the money the government loaned to me). My parents couldn’t tell me where I had to live or with whom. My brother doesn’t have that. Should he ever get married and accept money from our parents, he won’t get to have it be his (or his future wife’s or possibly husband’s) way. It really helps me when I’m bitter about lack of money to remember all of the strings that come attached to the money, with everything, not just the wedding. Make a list if necessary, put down every string you can think of, and read over it whenever you start feeling upset. At the end of the day, you have control over your life, and your parents don’t.
Such interesting Vine questions and answers!
Rez, you are not being a bitch by wanting life to move on a bit and expecting that the whole ‘I’ll do this thing to support you for a while’ was a fixed term thing and not a lifetime decision. It’s a question of fairness, I think. My husband and I have a similar set-up in that we live in this country so he could work in his field, and I worked a job I didn’t really love for a while because he was setting up a business. However, it has been with the clear understanding that we will move back to the country I prefer in a few years’ time, and if I decide to take a break from the working world at any point he’ll need to step up (because my earnings support the household at present). It’s easier said than done, but Sars’s advice was great and like I said: don’t feel bad for being fed up.
Maid, your situation rings really true for me. My two sisters still live in my home town and have received a vast amount of financial and emotional support from my family throughout their adult lives, whereas I ended up in another country and have received very little – a small cash gift after our wedding, but that’s it. I’ve made my peace with this by recognising that I’m the only one of the three of us who is an independent adult, with nobody expecting me to take their opinions into account in my life. This is worth a great deal to me and to you too, I suspect.
Rez: Wow, that was…spookily familiar to read.
I completely agree that the best solution to feeling trapped and resentful is to decide what you would rather be doing and, well, go do it. In your position I ditched my cubicle job and moved back to our hometown (2h away) to go back to school; he joined me 8 months later when he could arrange telecommuting. We got by on his stipend and my student loan. It didn’t change his situation much – it took him another 4 years to slog his way through – but since I was busy doing what *I* wanted to do, that was his business and I didn’t need to worry about it.
And whoever mentioned fear of failure above is dead on.
Another academic weighing in for Rez. Other people have covered some reasons why your husband is having a tough time, and they’re all good points. I’m sympathetic, as I had major dissertation anxiety and took forever myself. But I was writing other stuff all the time, so I didn’t have the complete stall out, and I’ve comfortably found an academic path that doesn’t require me to produce longer work on my own (plus I seem to have learned enough from the experience and subsequent ones to be much more effective in production).
So I’ll make another point: a lot of academic life (dependent on the field, of course, but it sounds like he’s in a fairly writey field) is exactly the same kind of thing as dissertation writing. Nor is this a secret to the folks that would be hiring him, who will have serious concerns about his ability to turn his dissertation into a book and then produce a second one; it also sounds like he might have lost touch with what’s going on, which he likely knows, and would have to do some catchup with the field to make sure he’s current, which he’s probably dreading.
I make this point for two reasons: one, to say, candidly, that to me signs are pointing to “no” on the academic future that you’re living your life in the waiting room for, and two, that living your life in the waiting room is risky in general and a particularly bad idea here. If he does re-point toward academics and gets a professorial job, I would *strongly* encourage you to avoid the “just on hold till the book gets out/contract renewal/tenure” kind of waiting-room stuff that will replicate your current situation. I don’t mean waiting to take vacation until the end of the semester, of course–I mean this kind of “our real life will start when…” stuff. Both of your real lives are right now, and you don’t get a second chance at them. Don’t put them on hold again.
@sj and @Sars (OK, really @all of the smart TN commenters!) — I’ve also tried to use the “When X happens, I feel Y” statements, and gotten the response, “well, that’s the wrong way to react to X.” Any suggestions? I love my husband, but he tends to see the world in a very black-and-white, I’m-right-you’re-wrong kind of way.
For Maid — I am in similar circumstances (mentally) and I have found peace in realizing just what Sars said: I would much rather be in my position than my sibling’s. My sister and her husband make much more money than me and my husband do, and yet they are in crushing debt. While we manage savings and home equity loans to do required home repairs, they have taken out large gifts and six figure loans from my parents to pay off debt and make needed repairs. I thank the FSM every day that I am not in their circumstances, and also not under the thumb of my sometimes-controlling mother as a result. I am not a saint – it hurts to quietly think that I am punished for being responsible and they are being rewarded for being financial d-nozzles. The important thing is to remind yourself to have those thoughts quietly, indulge for a minute, then ask yourself if you would rather trade places. I suspect the answer is no.
Rez, Some of the other folks weighing in have mentioned that the time it’s taken him to write might affect his job prospects. But academics, including those on hiring committees have all been there, and most understand that it takes longer when you have to work as well as write. Also, there are plenty of fields where the average is longer than 8 years, so taking so long is far from unusual. Anyway, the point is, I wouldn’t let that part of it increase the tension in your situation.
emilygrace–speaking for my little corner, it really depends. This isn’t taking a long time while you were teaching your subject, the most usual long-writing scenario; this is stalling out completely for years, having withdrawn from the program, while doing nothing related to your field and making no progress. I’m not saying that it’s a cut-and-dried division, necessarily, but that most of the taking-time people are in the first category, and it’s those and the two-year-dissertation people that he’d be up against. (And his references are likely to reflect this difference as well.) It’s another thing if dissertation coaching or something sets him on fire and he returns to it to rewrite, expand, revise, and complete in one year–then you can paint the intervening time as a hiatus, not as a non-progression–but it doesn’t sound like he’s heading there.
And we would be highly unlikely to hire somebody with a drawn-out dissertation (for tenure track) before he’s deposited, so I’d recommend against the plan of applying as a way to get himself motivated to finish.
I think he could benefit from looking for adjunct work to get himself back in the academic world and, more importantly, see if he actually likes it now. But if I were Rez, I’d be okay with that only if I could make my own progress now, thank you very much; I wouldn’t be okay with that as a reason I had to stay in my cubicle. Speaking strictly for myself.
Agreed with Jane above, and just to add that while 8 years may be the norm (gak) in some fields for the *entire* Ph.D., it is really not the norm in any field to take that long *after finishing coursework and exams* to write the dissertation itself.
@Anonymous for this: response: “There is no “wrong” reaction. I feel what I feel and it’s not wrong.” I agonized on a therapist’s couch for months until the day she said, “You feel what you feel. It’s not wrong. What may be right or wrong is what you do about what you feel.” That practically cured everything for me. If he doesn’t get it, go to counseling. It is never a bad idea.
I was going to suggest what I saw above: some paid assistance to edit or coach the dissertation. I’ve stalled out on some non-fiction writing, and the thing that would help is, frankly, a babysitter for me. Someone that I had to turn in work to, whom I paid to care. I respond ridiculously well to praise and interest, and do almost nothing in its absence.
A friend can’t do this for me. Two have offered, both with editing experience, and they both dropped out. It is just too much to ask of a friend. And, the truth is, knowing that a friend loves me lets me cheat on assignments. A friend will let something slip. A paid coach shouldn’t, and the money I paid her will matter to me as well. If you’ve ever thought, I’d give anything to have this over, then think whether you’d give a few grand to have it completed.
I suspect your husband is struggling with a good deal of shame for failed starts; I know I am. That makes it hard to face a friend. It is easier to face a paid coach/dissertation babysitter, though, because fuck that. I’m paying them. They’d better not shame me.
Re: “I” statements – I was attending couples therapy with my then-husband (I say “with” but he actually only showed up to one appointment) via a military chaplain, a little less than 20 years ago. Chaplain A glossed over the problems – abuse, alcoholism, squandering of finances – and spent about four months coaching me on “I” statements, reassuring me that communication was key and as soon as I could talk to my husband without him feeling blamed (for, you know, throwing a coffee table at me), everything would be fine.
Chaplain A retired, Chaplain B took over the sessions, and wanted to know why I only thought/talked about MY feelings and MY interpretations, and how I thought my husband was ever going to become engaged in solving the problems if all I talked about all the time was how *I* felt.
Then came the realization that I’m (still!) nearly incapable of assigning blame even when it is appropriate (“he threw a coffee table at me, but I should have known he was drunk, I provoked him by arguing when he’d been drinking, it was just a little bruise anyway and I shouldn’t make such a big deal out of it”). In a complicated way, that is in part because of all the exercises in separating someone else’s actions from my feelings and expectations. I wasn’t “allowed” to say, “You’re an asshole,” it had to be “I feel unsafe and undervalued” and then, of course, the issue is no longer about the undesirable behavior, but about how to change the way *I feel* about it.
Someone finally got it through my dumb young brain that abuse is a deal-breaker, but I STILL struggle with that kind of thing, in all kinds of situations. “‘I’ statements” and Occam’s Razor – I have an astonishing level of loathing for, and disbelief in, both.
Megan, psychologist John Gottman, who’s The Man when it comes to relationship actual science, points out that the “I” statements were actually initially intended as a therapeutic tool for trained counselors, and that even therapists were supposed to switch to something less passive if they were directly being attacked.
I think they’re a useful tendency in a lot of basically civil discourse, because people do tend to hear them less defensively, but by the time most people are angry enough to go to therapy, it’s a whole ‘nother ball game. And any counselor who’s trying to get you to use “I” statements to deal with abuse is somebody who’s only tool is a hammer and he’s going to therefore insist that everybody’s a nail.
Addressing the very first topic of bill-splitting – how do you split things when the third person is a child? Another adult and I went on a vacation with her 8-year-old. I made the hotel and car reservations on my check card. A car is the same cost no matter how many people are in it, and the hotel didn’t charge for kids 10 and under. So does she pay me back half of what I spent, or 2/3, or some kind of 1 and 3/5ths percentage thing? The trip was originally me, then the two of us, and then she asked to add her daughter. I went with a more expensive airline – paying at least $100 more for my ticket – so she could get a free flight for her daughter, and there’s a lot of extra effort involved in traveling with a child even when you’re not her parent. But I don’t have kids and honestly don’t know what’s fair – and my lack of child-adoration clouds the issue considerably.
(In case anyone is wondering, I’m not in line to be a stepfather or anything like that, so lack of child-adoration is OK.)
I have a PhD and my partner has a PhD. We completed in four years and five years respectively (European, with a much greater pressure to complete in 4 years than in North America). And I’ve seen various friends complete and not-complete PhDs, including one who took over ten years and whose relationship broke up over it, because he was doing exactly what your husband is going: life was going to start just as soon as the thesis was finished and submitted, but the thesis wasn’t going anywhere, and the guy’s partner got angrier and angrier, but kept denying it in the belief that she was being supportive, so that by the time he did actually submit, the relationship was unretrievable.
Also, there is so, so much more to getting an academic career than just having a PhD. If your husband isn’t active in the field, publishing, going to conferences, applying for grants and so on, he is not going to get an academic job. If that’s still the idea, then honestly, the two of you are kind of living in a fantasy world and it’s going to be incredibly painful when you work that out. I work in another area of university administration now and I absolutely love it, so you know, remember that there is absolutely nothing wrong with deciding not to do the academic thing. But the sooner you both figure that out, and then decide whether he’s going to write and submit the PhD, and what kind of thing he’s going to do instead, the better.
I totally lagree with Sars’s advice about learning how to communicate your frustration to your husband. Give it a good go, and see whether it changes his behaviour. But honestly, if it doesn’t, I would very rapidly advance from that to making other plans, and telling your husband that it’s up to him whether or not he comes with you. Please don’t spend another eight years of your life waiting for life to start.