So because I procrastinated on my Moving In Together FR so badly, I didn't feel like I should post another one right away lol...so now my "Christmas Day FR" is showing up well..now.

R and I had the best Christmas together. I work M-F 8-5, and he often leaves the house at 5am and doesn't come home until 10pm, and his "days off" (or I should say, least busy days lol) are always weekdays...my work days...AKA we never get downtime together. So for Christmas the only thing we scheduled was dinner with his parents, and the rest of the time we spent snuggling in blankets and watching Christmas movies (cough Die Hard cough) while drinking eggnog. It was perfect.

But this FR isn't about that. It's about the conversation we had after everything was said and done, and how fortunate I am to have this man.

After we got home from dinner, we very organically started discussing our future. It was really refreshing for it to just mutually come up without being forced...I'm a total sucker for those moments (:

It's basically my dream to be a SAH-M/W without really "staying at home". What I want to do, and he fully supports, is to quit the corporate world and do a half dozen side jobs that bring me joy while yielding some income. Things on my list include dog walking, nannying, Uber driving, freelance writing or copyediting, being a fitness instructor, and the list goes on. I want my priority to always be the home, but still have very controllable sources of income that work on my schedule and not the other way around.

R and I had an amazing conversation that actually inspired my response in this PPD comment, but really boils down to just this part I said later in the thread:

I don't understand how we spend whatever percentage of our lives in our office buildings, then follow it up with some paltry amount spent in the home. Why would you invest no time in your household and expect it to thrive? Would you expect the same of a business? No.

Essentially throughout this conversation we reinforced our belief that somebody needs to be in charge of the home. Two exciting things in particular, though, came from this discussion.

The first was we developed an incredibly specific plan for what, how, and when we plan on accomplishing all this. We are both excellent savers, and have a decent sum between us for two people our age. We agreed that our prerequisites for transitioning me into the position of homemaker would happen:

  • Once R consistently makes $50k per year. He makes about that now, but being that his business ebbs and flows, we want that to be a consistent mark always being hit.

  • But, not before we are married. Quitting my job for someone I'm not married to makes no sense to either of us.

Additionally, once this happens our plan is to:

  • Live entirely off his salary while siphoning mine in its entirety into savings. This puts us in a position where we are saving big, but also in a position where if I make $00.00 on a given month, we aren't hurting for anything.

  • Purchase a house before 30, though we think we can do it by 28 (we are both almost 25).

  • As his salary rises, we are committed to not adjusting our lifestyle to rise with it. I'm sure some degree is unavoidable, but we refuse to fall into that classic trap. We currently live very frugally but very comfortably. It feels like we are poor all the time tbh, but about two months ago I had car troubles that cost me almost 70% of my monthly salary (yikes) and that was financially almost too easy to manage. It really made me realize how fortunate we are.

  • So playing off that, we want to live around a $50k/year lifestyle for as long as we can/it makes sense. For our area and the cost of living, that's very comfortable but not at all over the top.

The second thing discussed was that he offered me some amazing advice that I honestly started crying as he was talking. The more he talked the more I cried because it became clear to me how wise he is to me and my life (even when he doesn't say anything), and how much he thinks about how he can improve my happiness.

Right now, I work a very disheartening, damaging, soul-crushing job (which uh, I am at while I write this lol). I'm woefully overqualified and underpaid. I have 40 hours in a week and I maybe work 5-8 of them. The other 30+ are spent pretending I'm working (cough talking to you guys) while my coworkers struggle to do the exact same work in all 40. In addition to those sad logistics, the owner of the company is an old, unempathetic asshole who regularly berates my coworkers publicly, demands quality he doesn't pay for (you just don't ask a McDonalds worker to cook a 5-star meal, so what do you expect hiring this bunch?).

I told myself to finish through my obligatory year of employment for my resume. I just hit my one year anniversary about a month ago, so now I'm actively job hunting.

What R said to me on Christmas essentially went like this (for full-effect, picture me getting teary-eyed in the beginning and basically sobbing by the end):

"As far as your job hunt goes....I don't know what you're looking for. You have x, y, and z long-term goals, but everything I hear you say about your short-term goals does not align with your long-term ones. It doesn't make any sense to me.
What I hear from you are two things: the first is that you want to be out of the workforce. You want to be in our home, and you want to build the domestic aspect of our lives. You know I completely support that. But then when you talk about jobs, I hear other things like 'I need to make $XX amount or the transition won't be worth it', or 'I need to move up' or a thousand variations of the same thing. Why do you keep focusing on moving up, when we both know you want to move out?
I've heard stories of this crazy girl you used to be from friends and family - working 70+ hour weeks, bodybuilding, turning and burning work like crazy and getting paid well for it. It's impressive, it is - and if that is the life you want then I will follow your ass down that rabbit hole just because it would be a hell of a view. I will absolutely support you working 70 hour weeks like I do them. I actually truly believe you are capable of working as hard as I do now or even harder.
But is that what you want? Because I know you've found your happiness in aspiring to nurture your family, both now and in the future. I know that's what you say you want, and what I think is happening is you're having a difficult time disengaging from the corporate dreams you thought you wanted before and you're using those old instincts to inform your current strategies. Again, if those are your actual dreams, please tell me now and that's the life we will live and I'll be happy to share it with you.
But if they aren't - and I don't think they are - for the love of God, please find a job that makes you happy. Please come home happy every day. That's all I ask you look for as you submit applications. I don't care what you make, I don't care if you don't get a raise at all. I don't care about any of it.
I know you try not to complain about your job because you work 40 hours a week and I work 70 and it seems unfair to you that you should be the one to complain. I know that's why you try not to say anything and I appreciate it. But that's not fair. My job? My job makes me tired. My job makes me exhausted. But that's all. Your job breaks you emotionally every day. Your job crushes the life out of you and sends you home unforgivably demotivated. I don't know what it feels like to be in an environment that fucking awful but I don't like nor want you to continue coming home emotionally broken twice a week and need fixing.
My point is do whatever makes you happy, but please be sure it makes you happy. I don't think a higher salary will make you happy if it means you're just as stressed as you are right now. I don't think putting more demands on yourself in the workforce will make you happy. So just forget about the money, it's not important. We do just fine on your current salary. So forget about it. Just take your time to find the right job and come home happy every day until we can afford for you to quit and be home happy every day."

So yes, by the end I was crying profusely. It all just meant so much to me, particularly feeling so understood with what I deal with at work....especially because I know every individual incident that upsets me sounds so petty, but it's impossible to understand how heavy it all is without being in that kind of environment day in and day out. And I especially never want to be overly negative, particularly when he works so much harder than I do, so much harder.

Also, since this FR is basically direct quotes from R, he finished off our talk with this zinger...I thanked him for being so communicative and expressed how much it meant to me we can talk so openly about the future and big plans without making it awkward or mean pressure for either of us. He follows up with:

"Of course, that's what quality couples have to do - talks like this are what we have to do to be successful. This isn't some relationship I plan on looking back on in 5 years saying 'that was a very special time with a very special girl and we made some great memories.' No, absolutely not. I plan on looking back on this time in 60 years and saying 'god damn I miss the days when her tits didn't drag on the floor, but at least we've still got that amazing something that makes every day worth it.' ...but maybe you should still take some pictures while you still look hot. That would be good...anyway, I love you."

And they same romance is dead!