Job loss and career changes

Treat it as something you face together, because job loss tends to weigh on both partners' life satisfaction, not just the one who lost the job¹. Work stress can also pass from one partner to the other and affect their psychological and physical health². So expect both of you to feel shocked, worried or angry at times, and give each other room to react.

Ask what kind of support is useful rather than guessing. How supported your partner feels seems to matter more than how much support you think you give^3,4. Help might be listening, company, ideas for the job search, or introductions through your own networks.

Try not to hide your worries to protect each other. Negative ways of coping with stress as a couple tend to go with worse individual and relationship functioning³. Shielding a partner from stress, even with good intentions, was linked with worse wellbeing for both people in couples dealing with a medical condition. That is a different situation, but it is a useful warning³. Share worries calmly and work on them together.

If you lost the job, tell your partner yourself and before anyone else, and keep it direct and factual. It shows the relationship matters and that you value their support⁵. Be realistic too: you both need accurate information to make plans, so say so when you can't answer a question⁵.

It isn't clear yet how best to support adults through job loss, so take this as sensible guidance, not a proven method⁶.

Make it a joint decision, and tackle the stress as a team. Career choices are joint choices, not individual ones⁷, so start by talking through what each of you hopes to get from the change.

Coping with stress together is linked with relationship satisfaction in couples from several countries³. Positive ways of coping, such as supporting each other and working on problems together, predicted satisfaction better than negative ones⁴. In practice that means sharing worries, offering support and asking each other what is helping.

A few things are worth agreeing early:

• Which short-term sacrifices you'll accept, and for how long. A wide gap between one partner's hopes and their real situation tends to strain a partnership. Couples do better when both are content with a joint choice that keeps both sets of aspirations in view, even if it brings temporary sacrifices⁷.
• How you'll keep checking in. Partners need to keep negotiating and re-prioritising across work and family commitments⁷, so regular check-ins work better than one big conversation.
• How you'll keep financial independence. When one partner relies wholly on the other, it reduces their independence and bargaining power⁷. Think about how both of you keep some.
• What you each know and don't. Accurate information helps you plan, and it's fine to say you don't have an answer yet⁵.

If the change follows a job loss, the section above applies too.