Stress Can Have Benefits, Some Wives of the Stressed-Out Say

A good day at Donna Pedonti’s house is when her husband receives a rejection letter from a potential employer.

“At least someone read his letter,” said Pedonti, co-founder of an unemployment support group for wives of unemployed men. “It’s so bad out there now that most times you get no response to resumes.”

Shoulder-to-Shoulder meets twice a month in this well-to-do community along Connecticut’s southern shore. Women offer each other advice on how to cope with stress and share techniques for lifting the spirits of their husbands.

“It’s like walking on eggshells,” said Mary Ann Grimaldi, also a co-founder of the group. “You don’t know whether to ask him, ‘How’d it go today?’

“Or, you see letters in the mailbox, but you don’t dare open them,” she added. “But you know they are rejections because they’re so thin.”

However, many of the women in the group say that the stress of unemployment strengthened their marriages.

“When things are good and there is money coming in, you don’t know each other very well because you are developing your own interests and you are traveling a lot,” said Grimaldi, a high school teacher. “But when there’s no money, you sit at the table and there’s nothing between you, sometimes not even any food.

“So all you have is conversation and you really get to know each other.”