His Wife Wants Him To Sell His Tuna Fishing Business Because She Wants To Have Children And Thinks He Should Stay Home To Care For Them Since She’ll Be Busy With Her Career As A Doctor, But He’s Refusing To Give Up His Passion
This 42-year-old man and his wife, 35, have been together for the past 14 years.
After a grueling 9 years of studying in university and completing a residency, his wife is now officially an MD in anesthesiology as of this year.
He works as a tuna fisherman, and he owns two charter boats.
Through his company, he owns two licenses as well as his two boats.
He purchased his first boat when he was 21, and he bought the second one when he was 25.
As of now, both of his boats have been fully paid off.
So far, he’s found a lot of financial success in his career.
To take clients tuna fishing on his boats, he charges $2,000 per day per client, and he usually has up to about five clients each day during the season, which lasts from July 15th through November 15th.
He’s so busy with his work that he’s usually fully booked with clients about a year in advance.
sanneberg – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
Even though it’s wonderful that he’s financially comfortable, the amount of money he makes isn’t the reason he continues this career.
“This is truly my passion. It’s the only job I’ve ever known, and I can’t imagine my life without it,” he said.
The first week of July this year, he left to go on his tuna fishing trips, but leading up to this, his wife started suggesting that he look into selling off his boats and licenses.
His wife then said that she wanted to start having children. She told him that because she’ll be busy with her career as a doctor, he should be the one to stay home all year round to take care of their children.
In response, he told his wife that he loved and cared for her, and he was excited to have children with her, but he would not sell his business or give it up now or anytime soon in the future.
He has been passionate about this business ever since his first tuna fishing trip with his father at 12 years old. In his view, he would be depressed if he stopped doing it.
“My wife has no power over my business. I got an iron-clad prenup to protect my business and home/property before we got married. It doesn’t protect our personal assets or accounts. She would be entitled to half of our savings,” he explained.
He was the one who paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund his wife’s schooling.
Plus, he bought their house and purchased a car so that his wife could commute to school.
While he made sure that he was the only one who had financial control of his business and property, he acknowledged that he wasn’t financially controlling in any way toward his wife.
According to his wife, the problem with his tuna fishing business is the amount of time he’s gone (four months each year).
He and his wife live in Ontario, Canada. But the charter boats he owns are located on the southeastern shore of Nova Scotia.
Also, his wife pointed out that she doesn’t feel comfortable with how “‘dangerous'” his career is. But he finds this strange because he was completely open with his wife about what his job entailed and how long he would be away working during their first date.
Throughout their conversations, his wife has continued to double down on how she wants him to sell his business and become a stay-at-home father once they have children because she is convinced that her work schedule would be too busy.
Besides the fact that he has eight months off of work per year once the tuna fishing season ends, he doesn’t understand why his wife doesn’t seem to realize that he’s incredibly busy when he’s working, and he doesn’t think she understands how passionate he is about what he does.
He doesn’t think it’s fair that she wants him to sacrifice a business he’s passionate about just because she achieved her dream.
“Personally, I feel that she’s ashamed to tell her new snooty work friends that I am a fisherman, even though I make as much or more than they do, as this literally began as soon as she started her new job and started hanging around with a much ‘higher class’ of people. A class of people I’m not fond of, but I would never tell her who to have as friends,” he shared.
When he brought up these concerns to his wife, she assured him that none of this was accurate and that she wasn’t embarrassed to tell her new work colleagues that her husband was a fisherman.
But he doesn’t believe her because the timing of when she started pressuring him to sell his business doesn’t seem like a coincidence.
Not long after his wife completed her residency and began her new job, she switched out her friend group and brought up the idea of him giving up his tuna fishing business.
In addition, she’s mentioned that she hopes for him to possibly sell the property he owns, which includes 120 acres of land so that they could purchase a condo in downtown Toronto together.
This is something else that he could never dream of doing.
However, in order to try to compromise with her, he suggested that they could research the option of purchasing a condo so that they could live in the condo during the wintertime, but he would never agree to sell his property.
When he told his wife this, she wasn’t thrilled about this alternative idea.
He doesn’t mind the idea of compromising, but the land he owns is his home, and he wants to keep it. Plus, they can comfortably afford it, so he doesn’t think it makes sense to sell it.
He doesn’t want to sacrifice the land he owns because, during the months when he’s not off tuna fishing, he enjoys hunting and sport fishing (as opposed to the commercial fishing he does when he’s working) on his property.
“It’s my favorite place in the world that isn’t the Atlantic Ocean,” he continued.
His prediction is that he could (and wants to) continue working for the next 25 years before considering retirement.
He has a 20-year-old son from a previous relationship, and he’s hoping to hand down his licenses and fishing gear to his son one day.
His son works with him as a mate on his second charter boat, and his son was a huge part of his inspiration for this business in the first place.
Throughout his son’s life, his goal was to avoid his son ever viewing him “as a failure.”
In his wife’s view, he’s being a jerk because she feels like he wants to be away from her for four months out of the year, and since his investment portfolio and business equate to several million dollars, he could retire right now after selling his business and not ever have to worry about making ends meet.
He thinks his wife is the one being a jerk because, from his perspective, she wants him to be depressed and unfulfilled just so that she can live her dreams instead of finding a way to compromise so that they’re both happy.
Now, he doesn’t know if their marriage will be able to continue since he is refusing to sell his business or retire anytime soon.
Upon reflection, he wonders if he is the one in the wrong in this situation.
For the last ten years, he’s done all he can to help his wife so that she could have the least amount of financial stress possible.
Luckily, his wife didn’t have to worry about going into debt after graduating from med school. Even though her schooling was obviously difficult, she didn’t have many household responsibilities taking up her time, so she could put all of her focus on school. He pointed out that not a lot of medical school students are in that type of situation where they have a lot of support and help.
As soon as his wife officially became a doctor, he thinks that she started to view him differently and look down on his career, despite the fact that his job is what funded her schooling in the first place, and without it, she probably wouldn’t have had the opportunity to become a doctor at all.
He is proud to stay true to who he is, “a country boy,” and he has always wanted to have a profession he was passionate about.
Unfortunately, it seems like now that his wife works as a doctor, she’s humiliated that her husband is a fisherman.
He clarified that neither he nor his wife have been unfaithful throughout their marriage, and there’s never been any suspicion for either of them that this could have been happening.
Also, he has never stated that he would go into retirement at a young age, and it’s only been within the last couple of months that his wife has started pressuring him to sell his business and retire when they’ve never had this discussion before.
While he and his wife could easily pay to hire a nanny or for their future children to be in daycare, his wife is against these ideas. She said that she doesn’t like the thought of someone else raising their children.
He’s concerned that if their marriage ends, he will be the one to blame for it, and that thought is understandably crushing.
Later, he sent his wife a lengthy email. Normally, neither of them does things like this, but since his wife was on-call and staying at the hospital at the time, he decided to email her and get all of his feelings out.
Once his wife read the email, she called him sobbing, and she was hurt that he thought she was “ashamed of having a fisherman for a husband.”
When she was done crying and was able to better articulate her thoughts, she told him that that was ridiculous and wasn’t at all the issue.
She reiterated her earlier concerns about how it made her sad that he was gone for so long throughout the year, and she again mentioned how his job was dangerous, and it worried her.
He’s always been aware of the fact that his wife doesn’t like taking risks, while he is on the opposite side of the spectrum.
As he was growing up, his parents were thrill seekers. His father loved dirt track racing, while his mother was interested in wingsuiting and skydiving.
He spent tons of time on boats with some of his uncles who worked as fishermen of lobster and snow crab.
Some of his other uncles were miners and lumberjacks. In total, his mother had 17 sisters and brothers. His grandmother was only married once, so she definitely had a full house with her 17 children.
Each summer as a child, he traveled east to go on fishing trips, and he enjoyed it so much.
He admitted that there was truth behind his wife’s worries about the dangers of his job, adding that he could get seriously hurt and not survive.
Even though he does his best to stay safe with state-of-the-art equipment, carrying rescue capsules on his boats, and making sure the captains are always paying attention, he knows that some accidents could be out of his control.
Throughout his career, he has seen small communities deeply affected when five fishermen were lost at sea. He’s participated in search and rescue missions and tragically found deceased men in the water.
During their conversation, his wife admitted that she’s always feared for his safety, but she said that her fears have only increased over the past couple of years.
Also, his wife’s mother has been talking to her about the situation a lot, which has contributed to her changing views about him continuing his career.
His wife is half Korean, and she described her mother as a “‘typical Asian mom,'” and this means that her mother is even more against risk-taking than his wife is.
While he adores his mother-in-law, she tends to pressure his wife a lot about them having children, so he thinks this has caused his wife to become more overwhelmed and anxious, which he feels is totally valid and understandable.
Because his wife doesn’t want to get divorced, they’re now planning to go to couples counseling, and his wife will also attend individual therapy.
She once again assured him that she wasn’t humiliated by his career choice, and she’s grateful for everything he’s done to make her career possible.
According to his wife, she rejected the idea of hiring a nanny not because she really believed deep down that she didn’t want someone else to raise their children but because she wanted this to make him feel like his hand was forced into retiring. She told him she was so scared for him to keep working this dangerous job that she was doing anything she could to get him to sell his business.
His hope is that his wife will learn some beneficial tools from her therapist for how to communicate effectively with her mother and not allow her to pressure her anymore.
As far as moving to downtown Toronto, his wife said she would still love to do this. Apparently, she’d brought up the idea of selling his property because she didn’t realize that they’d be able to still afford to spend winters in Toronto while holding onto his acreage.
He accepted her dream of wanting to live in a big city, and he acknowledged how expensive it would be to live in downtown Toronto. His wife doesn’t know much about his finances, so it made sense to him that she didn’t realize it would be financially possible for them to have a condo in Toronto without selling his property.
His wife has some idea of how much money he earns from his business. However, he obviously has to pay a lot of expenses as a businessman as well. Last summer, he spent $300,000 to install brand-new diesel boat motors on his Regulator 41 boat.
He also pays his crew impressive salaries, and he has to buy fuel, bait, and fund any necessary repairs. While talking things over with his wife, he assured her that they could afford to purchase a condo.
“I’ll still have my hunting property/sanctuary, and she gets to be closer to the hospital and much better multicultural experience, which I know she enjoys,” he added.
They came to an agreement that they would research renting somewhere for the time being. This would be the smartest option for them since the housing market in Canada is risking collapse because of such high interest rates. The plan will be for them to rent for the next year or two and then reevaluate depending on if the housing prices decrease.
As they talked, he clarified with his wife that he would not be retiring for a long time. But he let her know that when his son felt up to taking over the business, he would allow his son to take over as captain of his boat.
This way, he could spend the occasional week back at home sometimes. He has a second captain for his second boat, and his second captain plans to retire at the end of 2025. After that, he would allow his son to be the full-time captain of that boat.
What would you do if you were in his shoes?
You can read the original post on Reddit here.
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