My husband (39M) and I (33F) have been together about 5 years, married for 2. He is an attorney, but was never the career oriented type. Kinda fell into going to law school and had been for the most part passively practicing for the past 10 years with no desire to start his own firm. He lost his job 7 months ago due to poor performance, and initially I trusted him to figure it out on his own. But a few months ago, out of curiosity, i asked about how the job market for his field is looking and how many firms are hiring, and he was not able to give me an answer. Since then I found out that he had been quite passive in looking for a new job: admitted to only spending 1-2 hours a day looking, didn't send out any applications for the first 2 months, and even after, only relied on recruiters to find some listings to apply to. This greatly concerned me as we are living off of savings and my salary alone is not enough to support our mortgage. I have since then spoken to him about it several (3-4)times. From our discussion, we agree that his experience level has become too high for the value he can bring, creating a mismatch. Which makes it hard to justify his pay and he acknowledges that he should have worked harder and more intentionally previous years to avoid such an issue. This is a turning point in his career and i think a good opportunity to self reflect and come up with a plan to fix this problem or his job prospects is likely to worsen from here. But after several times of discussing this, despite him agreeing with me, his effort level have not significantly changed.
I dont want to be the kind of wife that is overbearing and nags constantly but i am running out of ways to be supportive. i’ve tried to verbally encourage him, pep talk, helping him start a spreadsheet to systematically screen for positions to apply to, helping him do mock interviews, but he remains pretty passive. His mom is a very reasonable woman and very kind. We have a good relationship and she always told me if i need help dealing with him, just let her know. She know about his having lost his job but not the rest of it. And interestingly didnt even share the fact he lost his job with his dad or brother, let along other relatives. Maybe out of protecting his pride? But that leaves me very alone and I am feeling overwhelmed by the fact that im all he’s got to motivate him and keep him on track other than his mom (who have not been pushing him at all, prolly because she doesn't know abt the lack of effort). Im considering if i should tell his mom about this and see of she has better ways to motivate him. What do you guys think? Would I be jeopardizing my relationship with her? Is that overstepping?