Her Husband Never Acknowledges Everything That She Does For The Business They Own Together, So Now She’s Backing Out
For the past five years, this woman and her husband have been running their own contracting company.
Prior to this, her husband worked several odd jobs here and there, but over time, they decided to seriously dedicate themselves to their small business. Their business relates to roofing and siding contracting, and she owns 50% of the company.
“I made sure to find a good accountant and an attorney and made sure we had all our legal checks marked. Since then, I have made sure to keep all our insurance up to date, write our contracts, pay our bills, pull permits, do our marketing, and, additionally, I run our Google, website, and social media,” she said.
Not long ago, she and her husband planned to start working on the insurance claims side of things as part of their business as well. Even though it would be a struggle compared to the retail side of their business, they felt like, financially, it would be lucrative and, therefore, worth it in the long run.
To get ready for this, she took an insurance class and read up on the topic extensively. Thus far, she is the one who has handled every insurance claim from beginning to end.
“Since we started the business, my husband will NOT mention what I do to his family. As far as they know, I’m just happily reaping the benefits. When he speaks about our latest ad or latest marketing, he’ll say, ‘Look at this new ad I made.’ When I’ve confronted him about it, he’ll get mad and say, ‘They know what I mean. Why are you making it such a big deal?'” she explained.
From the beginning, their business phone number was her husband’s, and they’ve kept that as their business number in order to not make things complicated.
When a homeowner texts the phone number with questions or addressing issues, she is the one who drafts out the responses, but her husband sends them as if he was the one who wrote them.
She also drafts responses to emails from homeowners, so she is essentially a “ghost” who is communicating with homeowners. Her husband wants to keep it this way because he feels like it would “confuse the homeowners” if she made it clear she was the one writing these messages and emails, not him.
Kostiantyn – stock.adobe.com- illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
“I stay behind the scenes because a lot of times people shrug off a female in the construction industry. I never minded this or cared to take credit, but I realize now that was probably stupid of me. My husband loves all the glory and even gets upset if someone doesn’t mention him by name in a review. Only one time did someone write my name in the review because they realized how much they were actually dealing with me, and my husband had the nerve to ask me if I told them to write my name,” she shared.
She has a log to record where their calls come from and where they’re getting leads from to track if homeowners are finding their business through their advertising. Multiple times, she’s published an advertisement on Facebook, and when they received a call from a homeowner, she asked her husband if the homeowner found them through the advertisement.
In response, her husband has said, “‘No, it was a referral.'” Then, she finds out down the line that the homeowner did, in fact, find them from the Facebook advertisement.
Today, she got a new computer for their business. For quite a while, her husband has said that it would be more efficient for them if they could have phone calls forwarded so that she would be able to answer.
The new computer she purchased allowed them to add other phone numbers for business calls. So, she assumed that her husband would be thrilled about this. However, it instead seemed to make him nervous.
Her husband told her that he didn’t want her to listen in on phone calls between him and his family members, and she said that she wouldn’t do that. She reiterated to him that the purpose of the feature on the computer was so that they could forward calls related to the business.
Because of how apprehensive her husband appeared to be, she told him to forget it.
“He then later said he knew I would probably think the worst of him, but the reason truly was because he didn’t want me eavesdropping, and then he proceeded to say, ‘Plus, I’ve been talking to clients for years, and I don’t want you reading conversations and trying to correct me or anything.’ So, I said, ‘Okay, since you have it all figured out, I’ll just stay out of it, and you can run the business as perfectly as you do. Also, make sure to handle our insurance claims we’re working on.’ He laughed and said, ‘Oh yeah, how many claims are you working on? Like two?'” she continued.
In response to her husband’s condescending tone, she told him she wasn’t doing anything anymore. Even though he made fun of how she worked on two insurance claims, those claims helped their business bring in the most money they’ve made in a long time. Apparently, her husband has repeatedly made fun of the work she does and insinuated that he could do perfectly well on his own.
As the conversation continued, she said to her husband that she wanted to leave their business. She explained that she was sick of her work being constantly put down, even though she did so much on the back end of their business.
Also, she was frustrated that he always pretended to be the one doing everything when she was truly the one doing most of the work. Sadly, his behavior made her feel worthless, and her goal in leaving the business was to prove to him just how much she really did to keep their business running.
Despite knowing that this decision would financially hurt her since she made money from being a part of this business, she couldn’t emotionally handle being undervalued by her husband anymore.
While some may consider her move risky, she isn’t concerned about money because, throughout the years, she’s still worked another job part-time.
This makes her feel like maybe she’s always been unsure about her and her husband’s small business and, in the back of her mind, has always wanted to have a backup plan.
Unfortunately, not only does this decision say a lot about how her husband has been as a business partner. After 13 years with her husband, she is now second-guessing their marriage. She believes that his treatment of her throughout the last five years of their business venture says a lot about who her husband is deep down.
When they first started their business, her husband did a lot of the manual labor involved. But as time went on, he would subcontract the manual labor work and no longer wanted to do anything on that side of the business. Her husband would inspect projects once they were completed, but they had a foreman who would oversee the overall projects the whole way through.
While she knows that her husband has disrespected her for so long, she acknowledges that their small business was made possible because her husband had the necessary roofing and siding skills and background knowledge in the first place.
Throughout the discussions with her husband, he has refused to admit that he minimized the amount of work she puts in.
This year, her relationship with her husband has suffered tremendously for many reasons, and even though she has been trying to make things work, things have only gotten worse. She’s concerned that her husband is keeping secrets from her and that that could have been why he was paranoid that she would listen in on his phone calls with his family members.
Leading up to leaving the business, she’d begun to take more clear ownership of her work and started to add her signature to business emails. But it doesn’t feel like it’s enough to make up for the several years of feeling undervalued by her husband.
Later on, her husband finally said he was sorry for his behavior and once again claimed that he was aware of how much she does for the business. He blamed his hurtful words and actions on stress, and he said he didn’t really believe the awful things he said to her.
Just this morning, she talked to her husband and gave him an ultimatum in regard to the business: She said that she wanted to see significant changes, and if those changes didn’t happen, she would stay true to her word and part ways with their business.
Now, she has a meeting scheduled with a lawyer to go over her options and decide what to do from here.
Do you think she was right to leave the business she and her husband started?
You can read the original post on Reddit here.
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