Their experiences are raw and revealing, and the interviews reflected an urgent willingness among wives to disguise their own fear and anxiety for the benefit of their husbands. The most common strategy adopted by the women was to rebuild their partner's self-worth. One participant, Tamara, tried to reassure her husband – who lost a $150,000 job – it wasn't his fault and that at least he was still being invited for interviews. She considered this ongoing encouragement as an essential responsibility not necessarily of being a spouse but of being a woman. "If you're going to be married and you're a woman, you just better be prepared to be the one that is the linchpin because, fair or not, most women that I know, that's the way it is," Tamara said. "So I sort of knew that things were going to fall apart if I didn't hold them together."

While it's not clear if Tamara's husband agreed, he gave credit where it was due. "She has offered unfailing positive support," he said. "I think that's really what's gotten me through." In other cases, the roles reversed. This was most obvious in Emily's situation. Her unemployed husband became so discouraged that instead of looking for work, he would sit at his computer doing little else. She perceived this indolence as emasculating.

"He is not strong like a man who just says, 'Oh I don't care; I've been fired ... Screw them, I'll go find another job'," Emily said. "He is very sensitive and emotional. And he's like a girl. Like man up… Be stronger. Have a harder shell. Let it roll off. Have confidence." The coarseness of her attitude is misleading. To her husband, she was extremely supportive and tactful. He was unaware she had been judgmental. This desire to emotionally protect their husbands was expressed by multiple women, including Sandy who would call her husband daily while driving home from work. Her husband described these phone calls as "very, very positive". He was unaware, however, of Sandy's underlying method of self-preservation. "Being in the car for the call is good; if it's bad news it allows me to decompress before I get home, so he doesn't have to see me worry," she said. Another common response among the study's participants was behaviour modification. Some women would alter their default style to avoid insulting their partner. Laura, whose husband's joblessness put at risk their lifestyle (big house, full-time nanny, that kind of thing), had to force herself to go from being a notoriously blunt individual to one who was much more cautious.

She said: "Robert asked me to be less condescending. He asked me to be more empathetic when I talk to him about the job search … [That] takes a lot of hard work!"



The need for compassion was explained by her husband, who said: "One of the things you feel when you're unemployed is you're hypersensitive to disrespect much more because you're feeling like you're not appreciated. You're not respected because clearly nobody wants you on the [job] market." But for some wives, it all became too much. They disconnected. One such example was Amelia who explicitly told her husband: "I can't get emotionally involved in anything any more." The effect that decision had on her husband can't be understated. "We can't talk about the employment situation," he said. "I can't even talk to her about the frustration … So that's tough. You sit there sometimes [in] silence. There's nothing to talk about." Other women commented on the increased pressure they felt to make sure they kept their own jobs, even if it meant tolerating horrible bosses. Others gained weight, lost sleep, and silently endured mental anguish. One wife, Shannon, summed up the points noted above in one sentence: "I don't think [my husband] realises the impact [his unemployment] has on me." Or as the researcher puts it: "There is an inequality of emotions here where wives' feelings matter less."