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Comment by NateEag | Hacker News Reader

At a guess, because his wife is a human and gets to make her own decisions?

There was a time when family members intervened when they saw loved ones engaging in self-harm. This husband is watching his wife expose herself to trauma so great that she feels compelled to seek therapy, a therapy provided by the same corporation that is profiting off her trauma. The easy conclusion is that the corporation provides this therapy to keep the traumatized people who drive the company's profits from quitting the trauma, which would be the obvious solution. Loving someone does not mean supporting their every decision, especially when everyone involved seems to realize that the decision is harmful.

"There was a time when family members intervened when they saw loved ones engaging in self-harm."

Some people would call removing you loved one's agency to make their own decisions abuse.

Those people are stuck in a legalistic framework that privileges labels above reality.

I agree that the question further up did come off as rather paternalistic in a bad way but their central point has merit: by continuing to support his wife's decision to work in that environment, doesn't that make him an enabler for the abuse?

It's not clear to me how the OP has interacted with his wife in reality, and I don't have interest in judging them.

In the abstract, though, I think yes, if you see someone being abused repeatedly and you support and encourage them to continue going back to the abusive relationship, you are enabling the abuse.

I think your question presumes among other things that the wife has better career options and/or no need for money, or we have a better idea than the wife what career is best for her.

I don't think any of us have any idea what the facts of the situation is. So it's not clear to me anyone is "enabling" anything.

I firmly agree the OP should encourage his wife to stop engaging in self-destructive behavior.

(I also believe sex work is necessarily self-destructive, as it commodifies, commercializes and depersonalizes the closest, most intimate way of relating to and bonding with another human that we have.)

Your phrasing of "why do you let your wife..." implies OP can and should control whether his wife does this self-destructive behavior.

He can't, literally, and he should not try to.

He is responsible for his choices, not hers.

Yes, if he sees this as hurting her and he's not trying to persuade her to stop doing it, he's responsible for that inaction on his part, and I'd say he should take action.

But, he needs to always remember he does not and should not control her.

I hear this a lot and I feel that often people making this statement are being disingenuous. My wife and I are a team, if she is doing something that I don't like then I can ask her to stop, she can do the same for me. An extreme example but if your wife / husband was cheating on you, could you not ask them to stop as they "a human and gets to make their own decisions"? Same thing applies to work, a job can take over your entire life and affect everyone around you. My wife had a terrible job that she hated and I had her quit it, take a massive pay cut and do something else, she is much happier now. People are so much on their high horse of letting everyone do whatever they want but people don't exist in a void, their actions affect everyone around them.

Obviously you should not use violence or force to cause a change but if my wife was working in a profession such as this I would absolutely give an ultimatum of either stop or the kids and I are leaving. Sometime tough love is still love. With that said I don't know OP's situation and they will do whatever they think is best in a situation.

Yes, defining a boundary of what you're willing to put up with is vital when someone you love is being self-destructive.

That is knowing what you are going to do, and when, and communicating that to your partner.

It is not about controlling what they do, which is what the wording of "let your wife" implies (whether intentionally or not).

Oh good grief, why not use the same argument for heroine addicts? If someone you love is involved in something that is ruinous for them, you help them out.

You should try, for sure.

But you can't make them stop choosing to take the next hit.

All you can do is try to persuade them to stop.

Sometimes defining boundaries of what you'll tolerate is part of that, as I've described elsewhere in the thread.

That's about knowing what you will do and when, then communicating it to the others in the situation. It's not about controlling what they choose to do.

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