short term working like a dog for long term marital success

so the andebobandy quits her job-life and moves onto greener graphic design pastures has been put on hold for now and i have made a return to full time bar employment. you might have surmised this from my recent post about the oulu taco eating insubordination customer incident (oulu insubordination taco eating customer incident?) anyway - i've been so busy over the last few weeks that i haven't been able to sit very long and contemplate what that means for morale. most of my introspection is done when chatting with friends across the bar, and i said something to my friend nabin (who's birthday was yesterday - happy birthday!) that rang very true to me as i said it. i didn't feel right not working on the bar, but something wasn't right about how things were going.

orangemanmike offered a bit of support after my announcement that i will quote and uncapitalize here, "i know how sometimes when you just make a decision to move, that in and of itself provides relief and "unsticks" everything." i think that is exactly what happened. part of what is hard in my job life is like i wrote above, it's my job-life. there are dynamics between my husband-partner who until a year and a half ago was my live-in-boyfriend-employer that are very complicated.

my husband's best friend, ines, was in town recently. she owns a beautiful and very successful tea business called tealosophy in argentina. her husband, rodrigo is an amazing chef who is incredibly successful himself. rodrigo has a pretty flexible schedule, and will on occasion commit to working contract stints with ines. i don't know what the hubby and she discussed during their time hanging out together, but in the time we spent together, she really helped me to understand that much of what i'm bothered by has more to do with our marriage dynamic than with our partner dynamic. she relates strongly with my husband and pretty much confirmed that everything from my point was right in line with the complaints of rodrigo. she said that it's just true that if rodrigo suggested that they sell 20 oz. tea bags she'd say he was nuts, but if some stranger came along and said the same thing, she'd tout him as a genius. that when he makes suggestion, that often her immediate reaction is to dismiss them or take offense to them, which is something that would not happen if it were someone else. and yet for all her frustration (warranted or not and more often not), he is the only one that she wants.

she said that what it took for her to change her approach (well, she admits that it more made here aware that she was doing it at all) was that rodrigo said to her that if she wanted him to work, that he wanted it to be clear that he was doing it for her, not as a favor, not as a sacrifice or at the expense of his own happiness, not for money or because he didn't have anything better to do or couldn't find anything better to do, but because he wanted her to be happy, to be confident that the job was getting done properly, and for her business to be successful so that she could be successful. to that end he wanted to be given the latitude necessary to be a real agent for change in the business and to be treated with not only the common respect that any employee that you value should be, but with the respect and gratitude that you should rightfully extend to anyone that does anything for you out of love.

maybe it was the fact that every time ines said, "i need someone to do this or that. who does this or that for you?" a million times, and my hubby answered a million times, "andebobandy does." or maybe ines relayed this same story to him, but something has changed for sure. i am curious to see how long it will last, and i'm really trying not to be cynical. let's turn that into a less negative sentence - i am hopeful and sure it will last.

it's a new year people, the possibilities are endless.