ETA: he has a full time job and does music on the side but wishes he was making a living playing music. I am a stay at home parent.
My husband (32 M) and I (29 F) have been together for 9 years. We met on Tinder, and he was a musician well before we met. I would describe myself as supportive of his musicianship. I’ve attended a majority of his gigs, ran his band’s IG page, created show posters, share his posts, stream his music, play his songs for our son. I know all of the words to every song he’s written, we moved to Nashville, I tell him how good his songs are, etc. I’ve always felt like I’ve done at the very least the minimum to show him that I support him. There are times that it’s been rough having him gig all of the time, especially once we had our son. I spent several nights a week alone with a newborn/infant while he played paid gigs, non-paid songwriter rounds, and went to band practices. Only once our son was born would I ask him when he was coming home or encourage him to hurry home because I needed help with the baby. Now that our son is a toddler and sleeps through the night, I encourage him to stay out as late as he likes and try to mingle/network, but he ends up rushing home anyway. I’ve never asked him to stop playing music. I have, however, voiced that I’m not happy about our son and I coming second to his music. He has told me before that music will always come first. He is also resentful that he’s not making a living from his music and admits misplacing some blame on me for that.
The other night we were having a conversation about all of this (it comes up often and has become an area of contention in our marriage). It was not a heated conversation. He told me bluntly that he feels as thought I don’t support his passion for music, that I simply tolerate it. His reason for saying this was that I pressure him to come home and “clearly wish he wasn’t a musician”. I did respond by saying if I could have the choice now then ideally he would not be a musician. I regret saying that the way I did.
He also said he didn’t like when I gush about my favorite bands (we had watched live videos of one of my favorites on YouTube the night before) because I don’t gush about his music… Now I feel like I can’t listen to my choice of music around him, which I understand is a ridiculous response on my part.
We haven’t discussed this any further and have just been behaving as usual. I can’t stop thinking about it. On the one hand, if he genuinely feels this way, I want to validate him and try to understand what I’m doing wrong. On the other hand, I’m feeling really manipulated. How do partners of musicians effectively navigate a relationship with a musician?
Tl;dr- husband is a musician. I feel as though I’m very supportive. Husband says I’m not supportive, only tolerant of his passion. Don’t know how to navigate this anymore.