When You’re a BigLaw Partner and Home Doesn’t Feel Safe

You don’t have to turn your marriage into another case to deserve help with what’s happening at home.

A hotel room during the second week of trial

Before anything else: Asia isn’t a real person. She’s an illustrative composite, not a client of mine and not a real lawyer. She’s 44, a partner in the litigation group of a large firm, and she’s been married for eleven years. It’s a Tuesday in February, a little before nine at night, and she’s in a hotel room two blocks from a federal courthouse in another city, in the second week of a trial. Exhibit binders are spread across the second bed. Tomorrow’s shirt is on a hanger on the bathroom door, and a room-service salad she ordered at six is still under its metal cover on the desk. The radiator ticks.

She’s been sitting on the edge of the bed for twelve minutes. Her phone is face up on her knee.

The last message from her husband came at 8:31: Send me a picture of where you are. It’s the third time this month. The first time, she thought it was a joke. She sent a photo of her office window with the desk lamp on, and he wrote back Fine. The second time, she was at a client dinner and didn’t answer for forty minutes. When she got home, he was standing in the kitchen with her laptop bag in his hand, and he threw it against the wall hard enough to crack the case. He didn’t touch her. He hasn’t, ever. He’s said that more than once since, as if it settles something.

She holds the phone up and takes a picture of the hotel lamp and the corner of the window with the city lights behind it, angled so nothing from the case is in the frame. She sends it. Then she sets the phone face down on the bedspread and doesn’t open the binder she’s supposed to be reading.

I spend all day telling people what the record shows, she thinks. I don’t know what this record shows.

If any of that sounds close to home, I wrote this for you. It’s for women in BigLaw, partners and those on the partner track, who’ve started to wonder whether something at home is wrong and can’t find the right word for it. It won’t tell you what to call your marriage, and it won’t tell you whether to stay or go. It covers what a label can and can’t tell you, what relationship abuse can include, why it can feel as if you need a finished case before you can ask anyone for help, and what individual support and safety planning can offer.

A note on devices before you go further. The National Domestic Violence Hotline warns its visitors that online activity can be monitored, and that it’s impossible to erase completely. If you’re worried someone may be checking your phone, laptop or accounts, that’s worth taking seriously, and the Hotline invites people with that worry to call and talk it through. Nothing, including a phone call or a chat, comes with a promise that no one else will see or hear it.

Some things come first. In the U.S., call 911 if you’re in immediate danger or there’s a medical emergency. For suicidal thoughts, emotional distress, or a mental health or substance use crisis, call or text 988 for the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. For abuse support and help thinking about safety, the National Domestic Violence Hotline answers at 800-799-7233; you can also text START to 88788 or use the live chat. Outside the U.S., use your local emergency number if you’re in immediate danger or there’s a medical emergency, and Find A Helpline lists crisis lines by country. None of these has to wait until you’ve sorted out the legal, work or marriage questions.

Where I’m writing from: I’m a licensed therapist, and I coach executives too. This piece is education for a general reader. It can’t stand in for therapy, legal counsel or an assessment of your safety, and neither woman in it is real.

This article is educational and developmental in nature. It isn’t a substitute for individualized care from a licensed clinician, and reading it doesn’t establish a therapist-client relationship. If you’re in crisis or having thoughts of suicide, in the United States call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Outside the US, visit findahelpline.com for local crisis resources.

What this guide can offer, and what a label can’t

This guide is about what’s happening, not about who your spouse is. You may have come here after typing narcissistic husband into a search bar, and that’s a reasonable place to start. It’s worth separating three things that often get folded into that one word.

The first is the everyday word. In ordinary conversation, narcissistic tends to mean vain, self-absorbed or unable to take criticism. It’s shorthand for an impression, and it gets used loosely.

The second is a clinical diagnosis. The National Library of Medicine’s MedlinePlus page on personality disorders, a group of mental disorders, includes narcissistic personality disorder in its list. According to MedlinePlus, a mental health care provider makes that diagnosis by weighing a person’s symptoms, experiences and family medical history, and a medical exam may also be used to rule out other possible causes. Years of living with someone, however closely, isn’t that process. A spouse who has shared a real diagnosis with you is one thing; a diagnosis you’ve pieced together from your spouse’s behavior is another.

The third is abusive conduct. That’s about what one person does to another. A diagnosis doesn’t mean someone is abusive or dangerous, and someone can be abusive without having any diagnosis at all. Whether or not your spouse would ever meet the criteria for anything, what your spouse does, and what it’s costing you, can be looked at on its own terms.

So this guide won’t try to settle the first two questions. It stays with the third, and with what might help. It can give you a way to think about what’s happening, some routes to people who can look at your actual situation, and some reasons you don’t have to have it all worked out before you talk to one of them. What it can’t offer is an assessment of your marriage, a plan for your circumstances, or advice about your legal rights. Those need someone who can hear the details.

What relationship abuse can include

Abuse is a word many people resist using about their own lives, especially when nothing fits the picture they had in their head. It can help to know what the definitions actually cover.

The National Domestic Violence Hotline describes relationship abuse as more than physical violence. It talks about behaviors used to keep power and control over a partner, including behavior that intimidates, manipulates or controls, and it names threats, emotional abuse and financial control among the ways that can happen.

Two things are worth saying plainly. The first is that the CDC’s description includes a single episode, so one serious incident is enough to take seriously and to talk to someone about. You don’t need to wait for a pattern to form before you ask for help. The second is that fear isn’t a requirement. Some women feel afraid. Some feel numb, or embarrassed, or mostly tired, or keep telling themselves it isn’t that bad. None of those responses decides whether what’s happening is harmful.

It can also help to describe what happened rather than reach for a conclusion. He threw my laptop bag against the wall when I came home late is something you can say to an advocate or a therapist, and they can help you think about it. Is my marriage abusive? is a much heavier question to carry alone, and it’s not one an article can answer for you.

Asia would probably say he’s never hit her, and that’s accurate. It isn’t the same as saying he’s never harmed her. The sentence leaves out the cracked laptop case, the demands for photos, and the way she now drafts her replies before she sends them. Those details deserve attention even though no one has laid a hand on her, and they’re worth bringing to someone.

A declined card at the hardware store

Crystal isn’t a real person either. She’s a second illustrative composite, not a client of mine and not a real lawyer. She’s 49, a partner in the real estate group at a different firm, and the higher earner in her household by a wide margin. It’s a Saturday in March, a little after ten, and she’s at the checkout counter of a big hardware store with a replacement cartridge for the kitchen faucet, a box of furnace filters and a bag of ice melt. The store smells like cut lumber and fertilizer. Somewhere behind her, a forklift is beeping.

Her card is declined. It’s the card tied to the joint account her paycheck goes into. She pays with a credit card she almost never uses, steps over to the end of the aisle by the paint samples, and opens the banking app. Her login doesn’t work. Her husband changed the password on Thursday. When she texts him, he answers within a minute: We talked about your spending. I’ll give you the new one when you can show me you’re being responsible.

They didn’t talk about it. He talked about it, on Wednesday night, for most of an hour, after she’d bought a coat. He does most of the talking about money now. He reviews the statements. He’s started asking for receipts. Last month, at her son’s birthday dinner, he told the table she was hopeless with numbers, and everyone laughed, including her.

A cashier calls for a price check over the speaker. Crystal stands with the faucet cartridge in one hand and her phone in the other and thinks about the purchase-and-sale agreement she marked up at eleven last night, a deal worth more than her house. She thinks about the last time a client called her careless. It’s never happened.

I read leases for a living, she thinks. How do I not know what my own account says?

Crystal’s situation isn’t Asia’s. Nothing has been thrown, and she isn’t sure she’s ever felt afraid. If she talked about it at all, she might call money a sore spot in her marriage. That phrase leaves out what actually happened: she’s locked out of the account her own paycheck goes into, and getting back in depends on showing him she’s responsible. Not feeling afraid, and nothing being thrown, doesn’t make that an ordinary disagreement about money. Those specifics, the blocked access and the condition for getting it back, belong in any conversation about the financial control the Hotline names as one way abuse can happen. Whether that’s what’s going on in her marriage isn’t something this guide can decide, and it doesn’t need to be decided before she talks to someone who can hear the whole picture.

When it feels like you need a finished case first

If you work in law, you may be used to weighing a feeling against a case. That training can be useful in a lot of rooms. For some women, it can also turn into a private rule: I’m not allowed to say anything until I can prove it.

Not every lawyer feels this, and there are plenty of reasons someone might hesitate to talk about home that have nothing to do with her job. But if you notice it, it can look like keeping a mental list of incidents and discounting each one as not quite enough. It can look like arguing both sides in your head, and letting the other side win because you can see its point. It can look like waiting for the one incident that would be undeniable, and wondering why you’re waiting for something bad to happen to you.

A courtroom standard doesn’t translate well to this. You don’t need a finished case to ask for help, and you aren’t the judge of your own marriage. According to the Hotline, advocates answer by phone and live chat 24/7, and they’ll talk through your situation and help you figure out whether your relationship might be abusive. That’s a conversation for when you’re unsure, not a reward for when you’re certain.

It’s also worth being honest about the limits of expertise. Knowing a great deal about one area of law isn’t the same as having individualized advice about your own situation. If you have questions about your rights, your finances, custody or anything else with legal consequences, that’s a question for a qualified lawyer who represents your interests and can look at your actual facts. This guide won’t give you a strategy, and it won’t tell you to collect, keep or record anything. Whether any step like that makes sense depends on your circumstances, and that belongs in a conversation with an advocate or your own lawyer, not in an article.

Crystal keeps replaying the birthday dinner. She’s trying to decide whether it counts, whether one joke at a table is enough to mean anything, and every time she argues it out, his side wins. She hasn’t told anyone about the password.

The Systemic Lens: why a BigLaw life can make this harder to name

None of what follows means a demanding career causes problems at home, and none of it means lawyers are more likely to experience abuse. It’s about how some features of a professional life can make it harder to see clearly, or to say out loud, what’s already happening.

Time is one. When your days belong to clients and deadlines, the hours at home can be few, and it can be tempting to spend them keeping the peace rather than looking closely. Being hard to reach can also become part of the story at home, sometimes fairly and sometimes as a reason given for monitoring or anger.

Reputation is another. In some firms, composure is part of what people are paid for. If you’ve built a career on being the steady one, it can feel as if admitting that something is wrong at home would undo something at work, even though no one there has asked. This guide can’t tell you whether any legal, professional, contractual or employment obligation applies to you; that’s a question for qualified advice about your actual circumstances. It also won’t tell you to disclose anything to a managing partner, a mentor, a colleague or a bar association.

Money can be a third. Earning more doesn’t, by itself, rule out financial control. In a situation like Crystal’s, the paycheck can be exactly what gets watched, redirected or questioned. That can make it harder to believe what’s happening, because it doesn’t match the picture of who that happens to.

And there’s what you may be carrying besides the job. If you’re also the one who keeps track of the household, the family calendar and the mood at home, and you’re used to making all of it look easy, the habit of absorbing one more hard thing can run deep. You haven’t failed at anything. You’ve been carrying a lot, in a way that makes it hard to put any of it down.

Asia is still on the edge of the hotel bed. The photo has been delivered. He hasn’t answered it. She’s thinking about the witness she has to cross-examine at nine tomorrow morning, and about how good she is at that, and about how none of it seems to be any use in her own kitchen. She opens the binder at last, and between pages she rehearses what she’ll say when she gets home on Friday, the way she’d prepare an opening.

Safety planning is individual, and joint counseling isn’t the default

Safety is its own question, and it doesn’t wait for the others to be answered. If you’re in immediate danger in the U.S., call 911. Not knowing whether you’re safe is reason enough to call an advocate and think it through out loud.

According to the Hotline, a safety plan is personalized and practical, and it’s meant for three different moments: during abuse, while getting ready to leave, and after leaving. That range matters. A safety plan isn’t a decision to end a marriage, and it isn’t a checklist that fits everyone. What’s useful depends on details only you know: who’s in the house, what your spouse has access to, what’s happened before, what’s changed. That’s why it can help to work one out with a live advocate rather than copy it from a list, and why this guide won’t hand you one.

The same goes for devices and accounts. If you’re worried your phone, email or computer is being watched, it’s worth keeping the Hotline’s caution about monitoring in mind for any site or tool you use to look for help, including online planning tools. An advocate can talk through what might be safer for you. No article can promise that a particular device, browser or step is safe.

When a marriage feels wrong, someone may suggest couples therapy. The Hotline acknowledges that couples therapy can have benefits. On abusive relationships, though, the Hotline is direct. It doesn’t encourage joint counseling with an abusive partner, and it says abuse isn’t a relationship problem. Its reasons include the risk that an abuser may later turn things said in therapy against the partner, that the imbalance of power in an abusive relationship isn’t something joint counseling can fix, and that the counselor may not know abuse is happening at all.

That guidance is about abusive relationships, not every hard marriage. But if you’re not sure which one you’re in, that’s exactly the point to start with individual help, from an advocate, a therapist of your own, or both, before any joint session or planned conversation at home. A confrontation or a talk that’s meant to clear the air isn’t a safety plan.

Crystal has looked at the Hotline’s website once, late on a Sunday night. She hasn’t called. She’s thinking about it.

Advocacy, therapy, legal advice and coaching: which does what

None of these puts your spouse’s behavior under your control, and none can promise a particular result. They do different jobs, and it helps to know which is which.

Advocacy. The Hotline says its advocates can offer support, crisis intervention, education about domestic violence, and referrals to community resources. They can be a first call if you’re unsure what’s happening, or if you’re thinking about safety.

Clinical care. Therapy is a different kind of help.

Among the reasons someone might look for therapy, the NIMH names relationship or family problems and severe or long-term stress from a job or family situation. There’s no bar you have to clear first. The NIMH is also clear that the right treatment plan depends on the individual person’s needs and medical situation and is chosen with a mental health professional, which is why this guide doesn’t recommend a type. One place to begin, per the NIMH, is a primary care provider, who can screen for mental health concerns and make a referral.

Independent legal advice. Questions about your legal rights and obligations, including ones that involve money or children, belong with a qualified lawyer who represents your interests. Therapy and coaching don’t replace that advice. A therapist can still help with clinical concerns and with how you’re parenting through this, and a coach can talk through professional decisions. This guide can’t give legal advice.

Privacy questions. Before you begin with anyone, you can ask what they write down, where it’s kept and who could ever see it. Don’t take for granted that a conversation with any person or service carries a particular protection. Questions about what you might be obligated to disclose, professionally or otherwise, are for your own lawyer.

Coaching. Executive coaching is for leadership, decision-making and professional growth. It can help with how you’re carrying your work while other things are hard. It isn’t abuse treatment, clinical assessment, crisis care or safety planning, and it doesn’t replace any of them.

Both/And: capable at work, and not okay at home

If you’re in a situation like Asia’s or Crystal’s, it’s easy to get stuck in a single frame: If I were really as capable as everyone thinks, this wouldn’t be happening, or I’d already know what to do.

Here are a few things that can be true at once. You don’t have to reconcile them today.

• You can be very good at your work and still not be okay at home.
• You can be unsure what to call what’s happening and still ask for help with it.
• You can care about your spouse and still take seriously what your spouse does.
• You can see your spouse’s side of an argument and still notice that you’re the one who’s changed how you live.
• You can decide nothing about your marriage and still take a step for your safety.

None of these tells you what to do. They just leave more room than the single frame does. Needing help doesn’t mean you’ve failed at something. You’re a person in a situation that’s hard to see from the inside.

Where they are now

Asia is still in the hotel room. It’s after midnight, and the room-service salad is still under its cover. The binder is closed, and she’s ready for the morning. At home, the cracked laptop bag is in the hall closet behind the winter coats, where she put it the morning after. She’s sitting against the headboard with her phone, the Hotline’s number typed into it but not dialed. She doesn’t know yet whether she’ll call tonight, or after the trial, or at all.

Crystal spent Saturday afternoon under the kitchen sink with a flashlight and a video on her phone, and the faucet doesn’t drip anymore. She still doesn’t have the new password. Standing at the sink afterward, running the water just to hear it stop, she’s thinking about the password, and the birthday dinner, and about whether the first person she’d tell would be a lawyer, a therapist, or someone at the other end of a hotline. She hasn’t decided.

Asia and Crystal don’t know what happens next, and nothing in this guide can tell how safe either of them is.

If you saw yourself anywhere in here, your marriage doesn’t have to become another case file before it deserves your attention. Saying out loud what happened, and what it’s costing you, is a real start, and someone can help you with what comes after. You don’t have to decide the future of your marriage before you ask for help. Your safety and health shouldn’t wait on that decision, though. If you’re in immediate danger or crisis, emergency help comes first. Beyond that, an advocate, a therapist of your own, a primary care provider or a lawyer who represents your interests can each be a place to start.

Warmly,
Annie.