If you follow my posts or read my job hunt basics e-course, you know all about my job search adventures. I’m no stranger to the field and have dealt with everything it has to offer. Lucky me, I guess.

I’ve had the added bonus of watching my wife go through it as well – “Up Close & Personal” you might say. Remember the movie? Robert Redford serves and the senior journalist / mentor to the young reporter played by Michele Pfeiffer. They later become lovers, marry and and everything else Hollywood. Celine Dion sings it best:

You were my voice when I couldn’t speak. You were my eyes when I couldn’t see. You were my job coach when I needed help badly. You imparted so much wisdom and I listened carefully to every word of advice you gave me. (Insert sound of a record needle ripping across the vinyl.)

That’s the way it should have gone, but then again it didn’t.  Could it be that I’m just not as smooth as Redford?  I don’t think so.  Real life just doesn’t work that way.  I am a job hunting blogger and expert of sorts, but I’m just not the best person to help my wife on her job hunt.

And I tell you what, I’m not alone. I’ve been exchanging e-mails with one of my readers recently and he’s struggling with exactly the same thing.   What do you call it?  “Her doing it all wrong.”

Let me break it down for you. I’m the intense, highly-focused guy watching his less focused but just as motivated woman conducting her job hunt. (The emphasis here should be on HER job hunt.)

What’s the problem? I take job hunts on like I take on everything else. I pour myself into it with more effort, passion, blood, sweat, tears, toil and trouble than anyone I know. It’s a project to be tackled, wrestled to the ground, defeated and slaughtered then shot in the head just in case. Maybe we should shoot it again.  I take no prisoners.

The wife on the other hand considers her options.  She:

• searches Monster,
• does some online shopping,
• explores some more,
• considers which path will meet her needs best,
• goes out to lunch with a friend,
• talks about it a whole lot,
• ponders about it,
• does some more shopping,
• enjoys herself some,
• probably goes out and does her nails and
• really does keeps tabs on her email.

I won’t tell you exactly who took longer to get a job.  That’s not the point I’m trying to make here.  (It might not have been me.)

When my reader wrote me about this a few months back, he shared with me his frustration. His lady was ripping through her savings at a nice pace and she’s not quite as focused as he thought she should be. My advise to him was to focus on his own issues.

What is it about her job hunt that’s got him all tied up in knots? Is it that he’s not in control?  Why does her job hunting approach give him so much anxiety?

It was great hearing from him this past week he wrote me again. It was no longer a “She ain’t doing it right” e-mail. It was a “We’ve been able to communicate and I understand her better” e-mail.

What a huge difference?

You see, the stress and confusion of a job hunt can wear on you.  It’s tough personally and it’s tough on the relationship. It’s also an opportunity to see if you can support each other through it instead of ripping each other to shreds.

My advice to those of us that are more intense than our job hunting other half is to focus less on the destination and more on the journey. You both need support, but the job hunter needs more support than visa-versa. Job loss can be so personally traumatic. It hits you unexpectedly and at the very core of who you are. It forces you to address some shortcomings you may not be eager to face. And if you have someone nagging you about how incorrectly you are looking for work, things can only get worse.

My wife and I are in a much better place for having gone through our job struggles. We learned so much about each other. We learned to appreciate our differences.  Based upon his latest e-mail to me, my reader seems to have learned something too. He’s fostering some good communications which is a good thing for any relationship.

Sometimes you need to go a bit slower in order to go faster. That’s just the way things work.

Hope this helps.