We have all dealt with a partner who thinks they are a career coach, but one 25-year-old on Reddit is currently dealing with a husband who sounds like he’s living in a black-and-white episode of Mad Men. Imagine hating your job, finding a new one that pays 50% more, has better benefits, and actually lets you come home at a reasonable hour, only for your spouse to tell you he’s “embarrassed” by your title. If you have ever wanted to tell a software engineer to get over himself, this story is going to be your new favorite thing.
The Original Poster (OP) moved cities for her husband’s tech career and landed an entry-level job in publishing. Sounds glamorous, right? Wrong. She spent a year and a half drowning in office politics, low pay, and soul-crushing hours. After realizing that the “prestige” of publishing doesn’t pay the rent or buy happiness, she started looking for an exit. She finally found it in an Executive Assistant role for the CEO of a marketing agency. It is a stable company, the boss is great, and the perks are absolute fire.
We are talking about a jump from $50K to $75K, people! That is a life-changing amount of money. Plus, she’s moving from 10-hour days with zero overtime to a strict 40-hour week with actual benefits. Most supportive husbands would be popping champagne and celebrating the fact that their wife isn’t miserable anymore. But the OP’s husband decided to take a different, much more b!tchy route. He told her flat-out that he “strongly disagrees” with the move because he’s worried about her reputation.
He actually had the nerve to say that she would get stuck in the “secretarial pool” and that an assistant job isn’t “appropriate for their life plan.” He even went so far as to say he would “think less” of her. Excuse me? Unless their life plan involves being miserable and broke, a $25,000 raise seems pretty appropriate to us. It is the ultimate “tech bro” move to look down on an administrative role that literally keeps a company running, especially when it’s a direct line to the CEO of a marketing firm.
The OP tried to be polite, telling him she was sorry to disappoint him but that she needs to prioritize her mental health and her bank account. She accepted the job, as any sane person would, and now her husband is calling her an ahole and giving her the silent treatment. It is a classic power move used by people who want to control their partner’s career path under the guise of “caring” about their professional future.
Let’s be real for a second: the title “Executive Assistant to the CEO” is a powerhouse role. You are learning how a business is run from the top down, and the CEO even told her there’s a path to management. This isn’t “filing papers in a pool”; it’s being a right hand to a business owner. The husband’s “embarrassment” is a total sh!t-show of insecurity. He’s likely worried that if her title sounds “lesser” than his “Software Engineer” tag, it will somehow hurt his ego at dinner parties.
The emotional commentary on this post is pretty much a unified scream of “Leave him!” Her husband is basically saying that her happiness and financial security matter less than his ability to brag about her job title. If he thinks less of her for making more money and having a better life, then his respect was never based on who she is, but on how she looks on a LinkedIn profile. That is a level of shallow that is honestly hard to fathom in a two-year marriage.
It’s also hilarious that he’s worried about a “professional job” when she was previously working 10-hour days for peanuts. Publishing is notorious for burning people out for “the love of the craft,” while marketing assistants often go on to run entire accounts. The OP is making a smart, strategic move for her future, and her husband is acting like she’s joining a traveling circus. It’s total bullsh!t.
The silent treatment is the icing on the cake. Instead of being a partner, he’s acting like a petulant child because he didn’t get his way. He wants her to feel guilty for being successful in a way that he doesn’t approve of. If she stays in the publishing job just to keep him “proud,” she’s going to end up k!lling her own spirit just to satisfy his weird, elitist “life plan.”
So, NTA (Not the Ahole). The OP should enjoy her new $75K salary, her extra vacation days, and her 40-hour work week. If her husband is too “embarrassed” to tell people his wife is a high-level executive assistant to a CEO, then maybe he shouldn’t be talking about her at all. She is winning at life, and he is just being a b!tch about the semantics.
What would you do if your spouse told you they’d “think less of you” for taking a better-paying job? Is an assistant role really a “step down” if it pays $25K more, or is this husband just stuck in a 1950s mindset? Let us know in the comments if she should have “followed the life plan” or if she was right to take the money and run!