Can I ask what happened last time you separated? Where did he move to, how long was the break and why did you decide to get back together?
I did read in one of your posts that you gave him an "serious ultimatum", but when he didn't comply you let him explain it away for 9 months. I'm trying to figure out if you have really stood firm before and followed through with consequences. If not I would suggest if you break up again you don't let him back into your life, or affections until he has a new job and is settled into it.
If you do break up it will give you time to heal and build personal strength, whatever the outcome is for your marriage. You have to take care of yourself and your mental health too.
Thanks for asking,
@Sumra .
When I gave him the ultimatum, we were married and renting an apartment with both our names on the lease. My ultimatum was that I wouldn't re-sign the lease if he didn't get the volunteer position. When the 9 months left on the lease expired, I left.
When I left he moved in with his parents. He began working a job a few months after that. It was a non-paying position at a start-up that was the only thing he said he could get.
I moved states back to where my family lives. My dad said, "Have him move in with me. He can work with me, and I may be able to get him a job." He moved here (not in with me, but in with my dad). That plan has fallen through.
INTERVENTION
Recently we traveled back to his home state. Everyone ended up talking with him one day, confronting him about the employment situation. He was pretty offended and hurt. But he promised his mom he would leave here (my family's state) if he didn't get a job by December. Then tragedy struck. My tiny nephews' mom died. We've been working together to care for them.
BUT . . . I have spoken to him and his family to make sure they understand: I appreciate the help, but this can't be the thing my spouse does INSTEAD of job searching or going back home to his state or whatever.
Everyone agrees (except for my dad because he doesn't believe we should ever stop trying).
SPOUSE'S CURRENT PLAN
(ETA: Given that I am uncomfortable and have asked him WHEN he can return to my dad's house or return to his home state)
My spouse says, "Once you are done with your graduate research, I know you'll have time to handle the boys and all the house care yourself. Then I'll leave and just focus on working with your dad to earn money for my own car so that I can get to work at a more secure job. It's just three weeks. If it all doesn't work out, in December/January I'll move back home to my own state or perhaps to my aunt's state."
MY SENSE
I believe my spouse has allowed himself such a huge gap in his resume that he has a hard chance of getting hired. I believe he did this because he gets his self-esteem from the
status of his job, so he never took any "lower level" jobs. I come from a family wherein everyone just works, and so this took me by surprise. I believe that by putting his sense of status above his wife and responsibilities, that he displays that he should not be responsible for a wife. I believe that he thinks that if he does everything else (cook, clean, be a great listener, help with any task, etc.) while waiting for that status-satisfying job, that all should be okay.
I really appreciate all of my spouse's support and treat him kindly while asking him to PLEASE just take anything so that the job situation can turn around. But appreciating him and supporting him has still led to all of these years of him not working. I'm so hurt now that I can sometimes barely feel it. I'm getting numb and just surviving. I need something different now, and it doesn't seem that he can just take a job. That's his choice, but I just can't agree with it. Time to move forward, as there is nothing more I can really do.
MY GOAL
One of the main problems I'm having is that I don't have a positive vision of what's on "the other side" of all of this. It just all feels like loss to me. I know I have to get disentangled from all of this and move forward to the other side. I get that. It just FEELS bad. My goal is to process the bad feelings involved, but to also start understanding and feeling that life can still be good even though I will be living differently in my forties than I ever dreamed. That's hard for me because all of my friends are married and well-off with children and that was my dream.
I'm kind of the odd girl out. Need to hang around happy, single people, I guess.
I don't want to be single, but I will be. I don't want to be childless, but I will be. I've had the opposite vision for my life since I was a tiny girl. Time to think differently. That's a lot of decades of thinking and dreaming and planning to switch around. I know I can do it.