well.

At her core she is change averse.  She does fine if it is me initiating the change. She freezes when she has to be the one to initiate the change.  At some level she struggles with decision making.  Not for her job or clients, but for herself.

As the primary earner for much of our marriage, when my career has required change, she is all in and on board.  We have moved 8 times for my career in 27 years.  Never for hers. 5 times domestically and three times internationally. She is all in at our next location, driven by my career, and kicks ass with her career. Until the next change/move. She gets stubborn, locks into analysis and change paralysis, and has a notable emotional crisis.  It breaks my heart.  I try to give her time and be supportive but events rarely allow for much time before action must be taken.  

I on the otherhand embrace change.  

This time she has immersed herself so completely in this firm, in large part due to my 2yr hiatus during the peak of COVID, that they are working her do death and she won't stop the insanity.  She is driven by guilt. Guilt over how leaving will impact her coworkers, who only care about her because she works herself to death which lets them take vacations and not put in the same insane hours.

She has had critical transitions in a number of her previous employers. She avoids engaging to solve the problem, sometimes for years, until she really has no choice.  Then she engages.  Her concerns are never realized as bad as she builds it up as being in her mind, it goes extremely well, and she then gets on a long period of a far better direction.  This has included tolerating toxicity from coworkers who are intimidated by how good she is at what she does and start to target her.  For far too long she does nothing about it. She brings it home, cries, works into a bit of an anxiety pit, then works her way out of it. Though not before she goes through a lot of pain, anxiety, and guilt.  She doesn't want to hurt anyone. Even toxic people who take advantage of her.  She rarely ever figures out that she is the one who is being hurt.

With this firm, she feels guilty about leaving.  Her father passed a few weeks after she accepted their offer as Tax Manager. The owner told her to go take care of her family and not to worry about her pay, etc... They kept paying her. When I was hit in an executive re-org at my company they added me to her insurance. They provide health insurance at no cost to employees though they do not cover dependents at all. They don't even offer dependent coverage.  The owner walked into DW's office the day I was notified that my role was eleminated.  DW was researching health insurance. Her boss saw her computer screens.  He asked, she shared, he told her not to worry about it and added me to the company insurance, at no cost, for two years. Not an insubstantial cost and extremely beneficial to us. As a T-1 diabetic my maintenance meds would run about $3.5K/mo out of pocket without insurance.  Huge.  

Now for the problem, this firm has a long history of being a meat-grinder and cannot keep CPAs or tax preparers.  They run dangerously lean on staffing, work their staff to death, and they have almost no client diversity.  They are nearly entirely a one client company. Very niche.  They will not manage their clients. If they piss off the wrong person in a very large network of semi-independant operators, they run the risk of major competitors getting a food hold in their client base, and run the risk of a wave of negative inertia in their clients online communty.  So they keep clients they should fire.  

So. DW is driven by guilt over negatively impacting her coworkers by leaving, and over guilt that the firm paid her for weeks after my FIL passed, and kept me on their insurance for 2 years.

She has worked ~3000 hours each year for all 4 years she has been with the firm. Nearly 50% OT.  She is salaried but paid straight OT so she is compensated.  She makes pretty good money.  Twice she has worked through pneumonia and nearly gone into the hospital for what I refer to as work induced pneumonia. She has worked herself so hard that her immune system is depressed to the point that she has had two rounds of work induced shingles in less than a year.

If she moves to corporate she will see about a 50% income in her base, work nearly no OT, and get a huge improvement in work life balance.  

I am grateful to the firm for supporting DW during FILs death, and for covering me on insurance.  However, they dont know shit about business management, refuse to take DW's advice on improving their own culture and performance, and I will be damned if I am going to support DW working herself to death for them.

I struggle to balance my having her back with being frank with her on my concerns.

She knows she has to go. We are now nearly 4wks past the end of the 2022 tax crunch season and She has not updated  her resume nor started a search. If she does not get on it she we will be into tax season 2023. She will not leave if she is not gone by mid Feb 2023.  Her guild will freeze her in for yet another year.  I cannot be supportive of that.

She has to leave and leave now.  

I am thinking that even if she does not have something else by mid Jan. I am going to firmly suggest that she resign.  Tax season is when firms offer just about anything to get talent.  I want her to be able to take the proverbial offer she cannot refuse without having to worry about giving her current firm a notice.  I would love her to go corporate and leave public.  WIth her background she is very marketable to far better public firms, corporate roles, non profits, government, etc.....

I have to crunch the concept and wording to keep it firm but supportive. to see if I can move her out of her own way.

Not sure yet how to do that. Hopefully I will figure it out.  Before my wife makes herself very ill.

The short answer... I really don't know why she won't take care of herself. I am worried for her.