Experiences leaving academia for a trailing spouse?
May 30, 2019 9:44 AM Subscribe
I moved with my partner for his academic job. He loves it. But it never worked for me, and I have struggled to get work and find community here. He has tried to find other academic jobs in the places I'd like to live, but no dice. Now he's talking about leaving academia. Thoughts?
I've given it four years. It hasn't always been the easiest time (we had twins two years ago, and have no family close by), but I have tried to find work and community. The job is great, and has given us a lot of flexibility while raising our kids. But I'm feeling despondent about my job prospects (slim where we live) and other aspects of the location. I cannot imagine growing old here. My partner is now talking about leaving academia (he teaches in a field that has crossover appeal in industry.)
In some ways, this makes sense -- it's my turn after following him around after every post-doc and now this job. He always said when we moved that it didn't have to be permanent. I really have tried, and he accepts that there are real issues with where we live now. But for some reason, the thought of him leaving a tenure-track academic job seems catastrophic. He loves it and has such autonomy. But it can't necessarily be that we are stuck living in one place forever, for one job -- or does it? That's what we need to decide.
I'd love to hear any stories, either about leaving academia, or even more helpfully, about leaving academia for a trailing partner or for the desire to live in a new place. Anything to help me think through this would be helpful!
I've given it four years. It hasn't always been the easiest time (we had twins two years ago, and have no family close by), but I have tried to find work and community. The job is great, and has given us a lot of flexibility while raising our kids. But I'm feeling despondent about my job prospects (slim where we live) and other aspects of the location. I cannot imagine growing old here. My partner is now talking about leaving academia (he teaches in a field that has crossover appeal in industry.)
In some ways, this makes sense -- it's my turn after following him around after every post-doc and now this job. He always said when we moved that it didn't have to be permanent. I really have tried, and he accepts that there are real issues with where we live now. But for some reason, the thought of him leaving a tenure-track academic job seems catastrophic. He loves it and has such autonomy. But it can't necessarily be that we are stuck living in one place forever, for one job -- or does it? That's what we need to decide.
I'd love to hear any stories, either about leaving academia, or even more helpfully, about leaving academia for a trailing partner or for the desire to live in a new place. Anything to help me think through this would be helpful!
I'm in a similar situation albeit with medicine and not academia, which does give us a bit more flexibility, although not as much as you'd think. We moved to our current location six years ago, me as a trailing partner to some degree. When we did there were lots of conversations about how the quality of school here doesn't matter because by the time our kid is old enough for it to matter (in my head this was first grade) we won't be here anymore. You can see where this is going.
The security of tenure must be pretty fairly life-changing psychologically. At the same time, if your partner actually gets tenure then you really ARE stuck in a geography that isn't a great fit for you, and the sunk cost fallacy will be harder to overcome once tenure is locked in. If he's thinking of leaving anyway, go to somewhere you can both hopefully enjoy and at least be satisfied with.
The question that I ask myself is: what do you want your life to look like long-term? I have many challenges living where we do, but the two that rise to the top are community- and relationships-related. 1) The area where we live is 94.99% white and I do not want to raise my kid in this environment because I value diversity and the degree to which we don't have it here makes me ill. 2) I have one Person here that I could call up and say "drinks tonight?!" and make that work. I have a couple other People who I could summon for the nearest weekend. Otherwise, all my friendships are maintained virtually and require hours of travel for in-person time. Due to college and social mobility, the rest of My People are all over the country but there are a couple places we could move where I would dramatically increase that People in Proximity List. There are career reasons and amenity reasons and political reasons that are also relevant but those two are the ones making me scream my head off to leave. We have tentative plans to leave next year to somewhere that is better but not ideal, and then hopefully within three years after that we can really get somewhere that ticks off lots more boxes.
So what do you value? And what does your family value? If financial security truly rises to the top for both of you, then maybe you stay put and figure out other ways to live out the things that are important to you. Otherwise, this seems like a good opportunity to leave because he is considering leaving anyway.
posted by emkelley at 10:59 AM on May 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
The security of tenure must be pretty fairly life-changing psychologically. At the same time, if your partner actually gets tenure then you really ARE stuck in a geography that isn't a great fit for you, and the sunk cost fallacy will be harder to overcome once tenure is locked in. If he's thinking of leaving anyway, go to somewhere you can both hopefully enjoy and at least be satisfied with.
The question that I ask myself is: what do you want your life to look like long-term? I have many challenges living where we do, but the two that rise to the top are community- and relationships-related. 1) The area where we live is 94.99% white and I do not want to raise my kid in this environment because I value diversity and the degree to which we don't have it here makes me ill. 2) I have one Person here that I could call up and say "drinks tonight?!" and make that work. I have a couple other People who I could summon for the nearest weekend. Otherwise, all my friendships are maintained virtually and require hours of travel for in-person time. Due to college and social mobility, the rest of My People are all over the country but there are a couple places we could move where I would dramatically increase that People in Proximity List. There are career reasons and amenity reasons and political reasons that are also relevant but those two are the ones making me scream my head off to leave. We have tentative plans to leave next year to somewhere that is better but not ideal, and then hopefully within three years after that we can really get somewhere that ticks off lots more boxes.
So what do you value? And what does your family value? If financial security truly rises to the top for both of you, then maybe you stay put and figure out other ways to live out the things that are important to you. Otherwise, this seems like a good opportunity to leave because he is considering leaving anyway.
posted by emkelley at 10:59 AM on May 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
I don't know if I have any specific advice for you, but I can share my own story about leaving academia.
Short version: It was just shy of catastrophic for my career and for my sense of self-worth.
Longer version:
I left a tenure-track job months before I would have certainly obtained tenure. My reasons had to do with Quality of Life: the job was located in a place that was actively making my wife and me miserable on a daily basis. I refused the "golden handcuffs" before they were formally offered (though I'm 100% certain that they would have been offered), and we moved to a MUCH nicer place, where my wife found a decent, but not great, job.
I am fortunate to have a "backup skillset" that allowed me to find, within a few months, a non-academic job in the Much Nicer Place. (I also kept my hand in the academic game by teaching as an adjunct at a few local schools, but no longer-term job opportunities ever presented themselves, in part because my field is pretty narrow/specific.) That non-academic job was good for about 2.5 years, until VERY problematic management issues arose (basically, promotions were dangled, then yanked away when inquired about, and I was told I was nuts for even considering such things: gaslighting, really). Coincidentally, my wife faced management issues at her job at the same time, and she decided to dip a toe into the job market. She found a great job in a great place, and that's where we live now.
None of that is the near-catastrophic part. That part came more recently, in my current location.
I figured that, hey, I'll find some kind of work, academic or otherwise, in the new location. I'd done it before. But it took me 18 months to do so, and those 18 months were absolutely devastating to my self-esteem. I had daily thoughts of worthlessness and despair. They were so bad that the fact that our house burned down in a wildfire was almost like a blip for us. My career/self-worth problems were far more devastating to me specifically, and to my family in general. (We were fortunate to have a lot of support from family and friends and community.)
All the while, for those 18 months, I was applying to academic jobs, quasi-academic jobs, industry jobs that drew on my specific skillset, and jobs unrelated to my specific field that I nevertheless know I would have handled very well. To make my crisis worse, I kept finishing in second place for the jobs that I applied for: it happened at least eight times. I interviewed all the time; got second, even third, interviews for really cool-sounding jobs; got terrific feedback ... and the results were always the same: "We loved your application, we loved talking to you, we think you'd be great in this role ... but we decided we had to go with a candidate who has more experience in this field." It was fully devastating. Worst period of my life, no question.
Against all odds, though, I have managed to turn one of my adjunct teaching roles in my current location into what looks to be a teaching job with a long-term future (if not a tenure-track job per se). I am lucky, though: I found an unusually favorable situation at a local college, and my entry into that situation through a "back door" (that is, adjunct-to-longer-term-faculty) is seemingly panning out. It's not permanent, though, and I still have to advocate for myself on a regular basis in order to secure continued employment, but it's becoming less of a problem with each semester.
All of which is to say: The academic job market is an unholy, blood-soaked nightmare. Unless a candidate is one of the .1% who land tenure-track jobs on the open market, the most likely route, in my experience (and it's been confirmed by many colleagues) to a long-term academic job is hoping that a short-term position becomes something bigger. This is not easy to do, and it's largely out of your control. I am very, very fortunate to have breathed new life into my seemingly expired academic career. In my knowledge, academia is a very difficult profession to re-enter once you have left it. This is largely field-specific, of course, and I don't know if it applies to your husband's field. But it may be less easy than it seems for your husband to get an industry job that draws on his academic skillset. So my advice, I guess, would be to consider that transition very carefully, and do a LOT of homework on how he can position himself, as a former academic, for a non-academic role. I worked with a job coach and he may wish to do so, also. A "regular" résumé is a totally different beast from an academic CV, and most academics have no idea how to turn one into the other.
All of that said, it sounds like you're in a really rough place, and I certainly don't mean to downplay that at all by focusing on your husband's employment situation. That's just what I know more about. My wife and I did have conversations similar to yours: I was the main wage-earner, but we decided that we'd move/change for my wife's career for a while. Now that I've been through what I've been through, we've decided that it'll be MY career that is the chief reason for major life decisions. We're both OK with that, and are slowly regaining stability after a couple of brutal years. It has challenged our relationship in ways we never anticipated, and recovery has required each of us to be very supportive of the other.
If you'd like some further perspective about this - I'm sure I've left out relevant data points - please feel free to MeMail me. Best wishes to you and your family as you navigate these difficult waters.
posted by Dr. Wu at 12:01 PM on May 30, 2019 [12 favorites]
Short version: It was just shy of catastrophic for my career and for my sense of self-worth.
Longer version:
I left a tenure-track job months before I would have certainly obtained tenure. My reasons had to do with Quality of Life: the job was located in a place that was actively making my wife and me miserable on a daily basis. I refused the "golden handcuffs" before they were formally offered (though I'm 100% certain that they would have been offered), and we moved to a MUCH nicer place, where my wife found a decent, but not great, job.
I am fortunate to have a "backup skillset" that allowed me to find, within a few months, a non-academic job in the Much Nicer Place. (I also kept my hand in the academic game by teaching as an adjunct at a few local schools, but no longer-term job opportunities ever presented themselves, in part because my field is pretty narrow/specific.) That non-academic job was good for about 2.5 years, until VERY problematic management issues arose (basically, promotions were dangled, then yanked away when inquired about, and I was told I was nuts for even considering such things: gaslighting, really). Coincidentally, my wife faced management issues at her job at the same time, and she decided to dip a toe into the job market. She found a great job in a great place, and that's where we live now.
None of that is the near-catastrophic part. That part came more recently, in my current location.
I figured that, hey, I'll find some kind of work, academic or otherwise, in the new location. I'd done it before. But it took me 18 months to do so, and those 18 months were absolutely devastating to my self-esteem. I had daily thoughts of worthlessness and despair. They were so bad that the fact that our house burned down in a wildfire was almost like a blip for us. My career/self-worth problems were far more devastating to me specifically, and to my family in general. (We were fortunate to have a lot of support from family and friends and community.)
All the while, for those 18 months, I was applying to academic jobs, quasi-academic jobs, industry jobs that drew on my specific skillset, and jobs unrelated to my specific field that I nevertheless know I would have handled very well. To make my crisis worse, I kept finishing in second place for the jobs that I applied for: it happened at least eight times. I interviewed all the time; got second, even third, interviews for really cool-sounding jobs; got terrific feedback ... and the results were always the same: "We loved your application, we loved talking to you, we think you'd be great in this role ... but we decided we had to go with a candidate who has more experience in this field." It was fully devastating. Worst period of my life, no question.
Against all odds, though, I have managed to turn one of my adjunct teaching roles in my current location into what looks to be a teaching job with a long-term future (if not a tenure-track job per se). I am lucky, though: I found an unusually favorable situation at a local college, and my entry into that situation through a "back door" (that is, adjunct-to-longer-term-faculty) is seemingly panning out. It's not permanent, though, and I still have to advocate for myself on a regular basis in order to secure continued employment, but it's becoming less of a problem with each semester.
All of which is to say: The academic job market is an unholy, blood-soaked nightmare. Unless a candidate is one of the .1% who land tenure-track jobs on the open market, the most likely route, in my experience (and it's been confirmed by many colleagues) to a long-term academic job is hoping that a short-term position becomes something bigger. This is not easy to do, and it's largely out of your control. I am very, very fortunate to have breathed new life into my seemingly expired academic career. In my knowledge, academia is a very difficult profession to re-enter once you have left it. This is largely field-specific, of course, and I don't know if it applies to your husband's field. But it may be less easy than it seems for your husband to get an industry job that draws on his academic skillset. So my advice, I guess, would be to consider that transition very carefully, and do a LOT of homework on how he can position himself, as a former academic, for a non-academic role. I worked with a job coach and he may wish to do so, also. A "regular" résumé is a totally different beast from an academic CV, and most academics have no idea how to turn one into the other.
All of that said, it sounds like you're in a really rough place, and I certainly don't mean to downplay that at all by focusing on your husband's employment situation. That's just what I know more about. My wife and I did have conversations similar to yours: I was the main wage-earner, but we decided that we'd move/change for my wife's career for a while. Now that I've been through what I've been through, we've decided that it'll be MY career that is the chief reason for major life decisions. We're both OK with that, and are slowly regaining stability after a couple of brutal years. It has challenged our relationship in ways we never anticipated, and recovery has required each of us to be very supportive of the other.
If you'd like some further perspective about this - I'm sure I've left out relevant data points - please feel free to MeMail me. Best wishes to you and your family as you navigate these difficult waters.
posted by Dr. Wu at 12:01 PM on May 30, 2019 [12 favorites]
I left a tenured position to work for a nonprofit in the same general field. My current position offered me a starting salary constituting approximately a 50% raise (my former institution was chronically underfunded), is in a larger urban area with more varied and exciting opportunities for my spouse (who was genuinely miserable in the position he'd found near my former institution), and does not expect me to work routine overtime. I am happy with this bargain!
Tenure is an impressive-sounding job benefit, but at the end of the day it's just a job benefit. Institutions offer tenure as a way of attracting qualified people and inspiring them to work really hard. It's not infinitely valuable.
posted by yarntheory at 4:37 PM on May 30, 2019
Tenure is an impressive-sounding job benefit, but at the end of the day it's just a job benefit. Institutions offer tenure as a way of attracting qualified people and inspiring them to work really hard. It's not infinitely valuable.
posted by yarntheory at 4:37 PM on May 30, 2019
My spouse is an academic, and we moved for his job. I'm reasonably happy with our current location, so I'm not in the same situation. I don't think it would be catastrophic to leave academia - many people have fulfilling careers outside of academia, and your partner might be one of them - but it is really hard to return to academia once you've left it.
You know best what you can tolerate, so the below are just a few thoughts, not an effort to get you to change your mind about moving!
Here's what I would consider if your partner's field is anything like my spouse's (sorry if you've already thought through all of these possibilities!):
- How likely is it that your partner will get tenure in their current department? At least in my spouse's field, it is actually easier to move to another tenured position in a different location once you have tenure. It isn't the case that once you get tenure you're stuck somewhere. If this is true for your partner's field too, and if your partner is reasonably close to tenure and likely to get it in their current department, then that might be a good reason to stick it out for a few more years. (And if your partner isn't likely to get tenure, that's a point in favor of leaving now.)
- Have you explored relocating your household and having your partner commute to their department? There are at least two couples in spouse's department who took this path, where the academic member of the couple commutes into our location three days a week and lives in another location the other four. It's tough in some ways, but your current situation is tough too. I particularly recommend this if there is a city where you have more social and family support that also has a direct flight to your current town.
- If you do decide to stick it out for a few more years in your current location, could you explore remote work options in your field? I don't personally work in a field where remote positions are easy to find, but maybe it could be possible for you? Or, could you find a a job that you could do remotely a portion of the time and commute the rest of the time? For me, having fulfilling work is such an important part of my general sense of well-being, so I really hear you on the challenge of living in a location with limited opportunities in your field.
Anyway free to memail me, too! Being a trailing spouse is so tough, and can feel really isolating. It took me almost two years to find a job after we moved for my spouse's job, and nearly five years to find a job in my actual field and it was so, so brutal even though I like our location. (Also, my spouse is in a field with industry appeal, too - maybe it's the same one? I might be able to think of more specific ideas if it happens to be the same field!))
posted by cimton at 6:31 PM on May 30, 2019
You know best what you can tolerate, so the below are just a few thoughts, not an effort to get you to change your mind about moving!
Here's what I would consider if your partner's field is anything like my spouse's (sorry if you've already thought through all of these possibilities!):
- How likely is it that your partner will get tenure in their current department? At least in my spouse's field, it is actually easier to move to another tenured position in a different location once you have tenure. It isn't the case that once you get tenure you're stuck somewhere. If this is true for your partner's field too, and if your partner is reasonably close to tenure and likely to get it in their current department, then that might be a good reason to stick it out for a few more years. (And if your partner isn't likely to get tenure, that's a point in favor of leaving now.)
- Have you explored relocating your household and having your partner commute to their department? There are at least two couples in spouse's department who took this path, where the academic member of the couple commutes into our location three days a week and lives in another location the other four. It's tough in some ways, but your current situation is tough too. I particularly recommend this if there is a city where you have more social and family support that also has a direct flight to your current town.
- If you do decide to stick it out for a few more years in your current location, could you explore remote work options in your field? I don't personally work in a field where remote positions are easy to find, but maybe it could be possible for you? Or, could you find a a job that you could do remotely a portion of the time and commute the rest of the time? For me, having fulfilling work is such an important part of my general sense of well-being, so I really hear you on the challenge of living in a location with limited opportunities in your field.
Anyway free to memail me, too! Being a trailing spouse is so tough, and can feel really isolating. It took me almost two years to find a job after we moved for my spouse's job, and nearly five years to find a job in my actual field and it was so, so brutal even though I like our location. (Also, my spouse is in a field with industry appeal, too - maybe it's the same one? I might be able to think of more specific ideas if it happens to be the same field!))
posted by cimton at 6:31 PM on May 30, 2019
Everything is better when you have friends. If possible, get involved with other moms, many will be in exactly the same situation and you will find support there. When my 3 year old got into a cooperative daycare, my life in a very small town far from home opened up significantly. I found friends and openings to jobs in the area.
Good luck.
posted by Enid Lareg at 9:38 AM on May 31, 2019
Good luck.
posted by Enid Lareg at 9:38 AM on May 31, 2019
I left academia for industry work and never looked back—though I was stuck in adjunct purgatory in the humanities and never landed the holy grail of a TT job, so it's kind of apples & oranges here.
But I will say location was a significant part of my decision, and it's made a tremendous psychological difference for me to live in a place I love, with people I love, and a robust sense of community (and I didn't even hate where I lived before! I just wouldn't have chosen it).
Honestly, academia fosters an idea that a true life of the mind cares not for its environment. Not goddamn true.
Another misconception is that working outside of academia will crush your soul, and capitalism will eat you alive. I mean, capitalism has its (massive) issues, but academia is far from divorced from those. And I make about 5x as much money now, so...
I wish I would have had reassurance about those two things when I was on the other side of this decision. Good luck!
posted by gold bridges at 11:51 AM on June 4, 2019 [1 favorite]
But I will say location was a significant part of my decision, and it's made a tremendous psychological difference for me to live in a place I love, with people I love, and a robust sense of community (and I didn't even hate where I lived before! I just wouldn't have chosen it).
Honestly, academia fosters an idea that a true life of the mind cares not for its environment. Not goddamn true.
Another misconception is that working outside of academia will crush your soul, and capitalism will eat you alive. I mean, capitalism has its (massive) issues, but academia is far from divorced from those. And I make about 5x as much money now, so...
I wish I would have had reassurance about those two things when I was on the other side of this decision. Good luck!
posted by gold bridges at 11:51 AM on June 4, 2019 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:58 AM on May 30, 2019 [2 favorites]