My husband (31M) and I (30F) have been together for seven years, married for five. We have two beautiful daughters (4 and 2) and another kid on the way. There’s not enough good things to say about my husband. I still get butterflies in my stomach whenever I look at him. The girls absolutely adore him. He’s done very well in his career.
I’ll preface this by saying that my husband doesn’t travel for work much. It’s usually three days to a week of travel every 3-4 months. The first pregnancy was very turbulent and four months in, he went on a weeklong work trip and there was a miscarriage scare while he was gone. Fortunately, everything was fine and worked out in the end but he promised that he would never travel for work while I was pregnant again. He has stayed true to his promise and multiple promotions throughout the years have allowed him to choose his own business trip schedules.
This morning, my husband heard a text notification on his phone and asked me to read the text to him while he was getting ready in another room. He had a pros-cons list about a business trip open in his notes app. I read the list and it said “possible promotion” as one of the pros and “break promise” as one of the cons. He hadn’t mentioned any upcoming trip or promotion so I asked him about it and he told me that he’s responsible for presenting the final outcome of a project he’s leading to company management in a few weeks and his boss has unofficially told him that he’s currently on the verge of a promotion and a huge raise and this presentation will determine if he gets it. The only kicker is he has to take a three hour flight to get to the city where he’ll be presenting so he has already decided that he isn’t going to go. He explained that he has no intentions of breaking his promise to me and he’s confident that he’ll get the promotion eventually either way, in a few months if not now. I told him that I think he should go and we should at least talk before he officially declines going on the trip. He agreed to talk about it after he got home from work.
I searched up the estimated salary for someone one level above my husband and it is a little over double what he currently makes (which is already a lot). Even ignoring money, the boost in his position will be great for his career and his goal of becoming an executive one day. I know that he doesn’t break his promises and always keeps his word but I want him to go. How do I convince him that he should go on this four-day business trip and get rewarded with something he has worked so hard for and very much deserves and prioritize it over a promise he made to me in a worst-case scenario?