If you felt so drained from work that you were considering taking unpaid days off, would you expect your partner to pay for your loss of income on those days? Or is that just not a reasonable request?
This 28-year-old woman has a super stressful career that involves managing accounts for international clients. Throughout the last year, she has been working 10 to 12-hour days.
She is also required to be available nonstop to take meetings, and so, she’s suffering from severe burnout. It’s not like she’s failing at her job because she’s stressed; she’s actually doing well balancing it all, but she’s just running herself ragged.
“Lately, the chronic stress has caught up to me, and I’ve gotten physically sick. I’m at a point where I desperately need to step back, log off completely, and take a few unpaid days just to recover without staring at a laptop screen,” she explained.
“Because I was stressed about the brief dip in income, I asked my fiancé (earning 6 digits) if he could pay for my income for just these few days so I could rest without the guilt.”
“I wasn’t asking him to carry me financially forever; I just needed a temporary safety net for less than a week because my body is failing me. His response? A flat ‘No.’ He told me that it wasn’t his responsibility and that he felt like my personal obligations were just being passed onto him.”
She feels devastated and abandoned by her fiancé’s failure to pay for her days off. This was a cry for help; it’s more than just money to her.
Speaking of money, she does have a nice emergency fund saved, and she can afford to cover her own time off and loss of income, so it’s not like she’s going to be hard up for cash by skipping a few days clocking in.
However, she’s mad that she had to even ask her fiancé to give her money, and the cold way he rejected her request makes her feel extraordinarily alone.
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“If I am already on my own when I’m sick for a few days, what happens in the future if there’s a real crisis? What if we have a family, and I have to take time off to recover?” she wondered
“Am I wrong for expecting a fiancé to step up in a moment like this? I’m seriously sitting here thinking that if I have to face every single life crisis by myself anyway, I’d rather just live alone and be single than feel this lonely next to someone who is supposed to love me.”
I’m sorry, but I do think it’s crazy of her to think her fiancé should be paying for her loss of income on her unpaid days off. Why won’t she use her emergency fund? I just don’t get that.
Going without pay for a few days shouldn’t make her that upset since she’s saying she’s financially stable. Additionally, it’s just wildly unreasonable to think your partner should foot the bill for your unpaid days off.
What advice do you have for her?
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By Bre Avery Zacharski
Hi, I'm Bre, Chip Chick's CEO! I have a degree in Textile/Surface Design from The Fashion Institute of Technology, and... More about Bre Avery Zacharski
