I have to agree with Cary.

Ultimately, success in art will be a result of toil despite external necessities. If he doesn't have it in him to strive despite the challenges of a day job, he probably doesn't have it in him to compete in the amazingly competitive art world.

One difference that wasn't mentioned is she gets to use her fresh energy to make her best efforts in her chosen field.

He on the other hand has to create with what's left over after working all week at a job that's probably very draining.

Big difference.

However, action before motivation is always good advice.

(linkback) Yes or No? My husband supported me in my art; should I now support him? [VOTE] - http://www.thriveorfail.com/b80b6

Or course, I can say that as someone who started out in the commercial arts and has now migrated to bankruptcy law. To me, if you can make money in the arts, good for you. But, to expect to have the opportunity when food needs to get on the table, is sheer indulgence. Very few people are aesthetically aware, at least here on the West Coast. (Unless you include the nip and tuck factor.) If you wanna make art, do it, put it on your myspace page and be done with it.

He has more or less given up and become one of the tv zombies...and that's just not what creative types are supposed to do.

Your letter reads as if you need a new roadmap, because you cannot find yourself in the comfortable, boring atlas of your limited expectations. Yawn.

You are framing yourself with conventional props such as art and unions and such because you cannot even imagine any version of the true cosmos. And you frame this tedious sofa-sized, neutral-toned painting in a way that pits you against the person who is supposed to be the love of your life.

Baloney. Boring, thick-sliced American baloney.

You are looking for confirmation that you are cool, and your partner is not cool. So that you can leave, and cite Salon as justification. Yuk. How does the union even fit into this? Do you believe just writing "union" will show how uncool is this person who loves you? To give you an excuse?

Do your art. And let that person go, if that is what you want. But, in ten years, you probably will wish you had a union job, and the person you left behind probably will be doing better art, and maybe still will have that union job.

You will be the fool, in comparative terms. Then, write another letter to Cary, and complain again in some ramped-up, higher-level, more-thinly-sliced fashion.

It sounds like he's either blocked, afraid to try, or fearful of failing. And any support you give him under those circumstances, LW, will be seen as unwanted pressure to achieve something he's not sure he can. The ball is in his court--all you can do is let him know you want to see him happy and that you are there for him no matter which course he decides to follow.

As you can tell by the previous letters, no one is sympathetic to your desire for self-expression. No one wants you to be an artist, and no one wants to hear about your torment. Or your husband's. That's why you just have to do it and he just has to do it. Maybe you will come up with something you can sell, and maybe you will have a career and make a go of it, and maybe he will, too. But writing careers and artistic careers are entirely self-generated, and that's how it should be. Here's the secret--for all the "torment", artists consider making art to be more fun and rewarding than any other thing. If your husband doesn't feel that way, then he should go ahead and keep working and watching TV. It may be that your lives will then diverge--it may be that they won't. But you can't motivate him and you can't free him--it is in his demand for freedom that he will find his artistic meaning. So leave him alone and keep working on your own stuff. Set a good example, and maybe he will follow it.

I recommend getting him to enroll in an evening class at your local Community College. Community Colleges are the best deals around. They hardly cost anything and it's very motivating to be around other students and teachers.

...then he should be doing his art in his spare time, building his artistic resume so that he can afford to quit his job and work on his art full time. You can't do it for him - he has to make the first step himself.

LW doesn't sound like she's trying to think of a reason to leave her husband, so I don't understand your harshness. Saying he has a union job with great benefits doesn't sound like she's implying he's uncool to me. Put your weird personal filters aside and read the letter.

When he's ready, when the urge to do something besides look at the TV becomes too great, he will turn it off and get off the couch. (Maybe he's just dead tired when he gets home. He is a few years older now than when you met him, you know. Work affects the body differently as a person ages.)

You can encourage him, however, with him-centric things. You can ask him questions about his previous artistic endeavors, whether he misses them, whether he's lost interest in them, whether maybe something else is interesting to him. Maybe there's something new brewing in his subconscious and it just hasn't formulated itself into a cohesive thought yet. You could find and go to art shows together to respark his interest. You could look at his old works and ask about them. You can find a new thing for the two of you to do together that might respark his interest in life off the couch.

You don't owe him anything more than any spouse owes a spouse: to be supportive and help your spouse live as happy a life as you can. One more thing is to make sure you two are having enough sex. The loss of sex in a marriage can snuff out the spark of creativity.