Bare with me because there is a bit of back story to this… I’m almost 40 and currently I have nowhere to advance with my current job title and level of education. I work seven days a week between 56 and 84 hours a week, on holidays I’m still on call, and my job is filthy. Some days I only get to see my kids when they wake up and are going to bed.

A few years ago my boss confided in me that he was thinking of retiring and when his successor takes his job, a position within that department would be open. He said if I received a degree in anything related to the position, I could make a lateral move into another department which would also make me the next in line for his position. My wife was ecstatic! I would be making about the same money but I would have my weekends off with no forced overtime, no on-call holidays, and I’d be in a clean office environment with an hour lunch to run home and eat. She encouraged me to enroll in college was super supportive of everything.

Last year, my company had their annual environmental audit. I was explaining to my wife about the auditing process because I wasn’t looking forward to that part of the job. When I told her that after the week long audit, my boss and his successor have to take the auditors to dinner (one of them a woman) to, idk, suck up for a better score, my wife exploded. She said it’s disgusting that my company expects married men to “whore themselves out” to female auditors. We had a big fight over this when I explained to her that it’s a professional setting with a large group of people and it’s how this business has always been conducted and I would be expected to attend. The woman in question is in her 60s, she probably will be retired by time I take the job. But my wife assumes there will be a younger, hotter woman to take her place. Any time the new job is mentioned she basically shuts down. The audit is going on right now and there’s a lot of tension in my house.

My wife’s insecurities from her past relationships have always controlled our own relationship and I always try to put myself in her shoes. But I’ve been working very hard for this position. I‘ll have a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science within the year and I’ve been on the Dean’s list the entire time. Not to mention my employer has invested a lot of their money in my education and are counting on me to follow through. I just got off an 84 hour work week and had to write a 1,400 word paper. I am mentally and physically exhausted and I don’t want it all to be for nothing, so I still have every intention of accepting the position when HR posts it.

I think I know the answer but AITA here?