# Job loss and career changes > Job loss tends to affect both partners, so it helps to face it as a team. Ask what kind of support is useful, share your worries rather than hiding them, and be honest about what you don't yet know. For a career change, decide together and keep revisiting the plan. Not reviewed yet: test content. - **Job loss reaches you both:** it tends to weigh on the partner who didn't lose the job too, so face it together. - **Ask what kind of support helps:** how supported your partner feels matters more than how much you think you're giving. - **Share worries instead of hiding them:** protecting each other by staying quiet tends to backfire. - **Career choices are joint choices:** talk through what each of you hopes for, and what each of you will give up for now. - **Keep checking in:** a plan for a hard stretch needs revisiting as things change. ## How do you support a partner who has lost their job? 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 job [1]. Work stress can also pass from one partner to the other and affect their psychological and physical health [2]. 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 functioning [3]. 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 warning [3]. 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 support [5]. Be realistic too: you both need accurate information to make plans, so say so when you can't answer a question [5]. It isn't clear yet how best to support adults through job loss, so take this as sensible guidance, not a proven method [6]. ## How do you get through a career change together? Make it a joint decision, and tackle the stress as a team. Career choices are joint choices, not individual ones [7], 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 countries [3]. Positive ways of coping, such as supporting each other and working on problems together, predicted satisfaction better than negative ones [4]. 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 sacrifices [7]. - **How you'll keep checking in.** Partners need to keep negotiating and re-prioritising across work and family commitments [7], 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 power [7]. 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 yet [5]. If the change follows a job loss, the section above applies too. > **Try this together:** Set aside 10 minutes. Each of you writes down three things: what you hope the next stage of work will bring, which short-term sacrifices you could accept and for how long, and what kind of support helps you most right now. Swap notes, talk them through, and pick a date to check in again. ## When to get more help Money questions often come up when one of you is out of work or changing course. This is general information, not financial advice: for decisions about your own situation, talk to a qualified financial adviser or a free financial counselling service. ## Common questions ### How do we avoid blaming each other during a stressful time? Try to treat the situation as the problem, not each other. Say what you're worried about in plain terms, such as "I'm anxious about the bills", rather than "you should have...". If a conversation gets heated, take a short break and come back to it. Agree to look for next steps together rather than looking for fault. ### How can we stay connected when work stress is high? Keep small habits going: a short daily chat, a walk, a meal together. Ask each other what is helping and what isn't. Make a little time to talk about something other than the job search or the career plan, so the stress doesn't become the only thing between you. ### How do we decide whose career comes first? Try not to settle it by default or by who earns more. Talk through what each of you hopes for, agree which sacrifices you're both willing to make and for how long, and set a date to revisit the choice. Think about how both of you keep some financial independence while one career takes the lead. ## Sources 1. Is the problem mine, yours, or ours? The impact of unemployment on couples' life satisfaction and specific domain satisfaction. Esche · Advances in Life Course Research · 2020 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.alcr.2020.100354 2. Stress and Strain Crossover. Westman · Human Relations · 2001 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726701546002 3. Dyadic Coping in Couples: A Conceptual Integration and a Review of the Empirical Literature. Falconier and Kuhn · Frontiers in Psychology · 2019 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00571 4. Dyadic coping and relationship satisfaction: A meta-analysis. Falconier and others · Clinical Psychology Review · 2015 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2015.07.002 5. Telling family and friends that you've been made redundant. documents.uow.edu.au https://documents.uow.edu.au/content/groups/public/@web/@ohs/documents/doc/uow265055.pdf 6. Mental health promotion and protection relating to key life events and transitions in adulthood: a rapid systematic review of systematic reviews. Uphoff and others · Journal of Mental Health · 2025 https://doi.org/10.1080/09638237.2022.2069724 7. How to make partnerships and careers work in face of (subtle) social norms. researchonline.lse.ac.uk · 2022 https://researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/116070/1/businessreview_2022_06_16_how_to_make_partnerships_and_careers_work.pdf Source: https://coupletools.com/learn/job-loss-and-career-changes