I am the significant other of someone who is heavily invested in EA-values and working full time at an EA-aligned organisation. I personally am interested in the work that the EA community is pursuing. And although a good amount of the values, considerations and motivations that are underpinning EA are overlapping with my personal values, as well as with motivations and questions that are fueling my professional field (which is not in EA), there are a few crucial EA-values that I personally don't subscribe to.
Increasingly I find myself in a position where I feel that I have to defend myself to my significant other for actions (from professional pursuits to small, family decisions) that are not necessarily the most tractable, quantifiable or having the most possible impact, according to EA-motivators.
These discussions and family-research-moments (ranging from 'what charity shall we donate to?' to 'what are your reasons for thinking that taking on a particular project - I am self-employed - will be the best use of your time?') are increasingly eating into my self-worth and feeding insecurities. Learning more about the EA movement via the forum, 80k website and podcasts is sometimes even causing substantial anxiety about my professional work as well as my personal motivations and values.
This made me think about the people near and dear to EA-people. How they are doing? How are they affected by it, if at all? And is there mental support for significant others that are supportive of, but not completely aligned to EA-values?
The only post in this context on the EA-forum I could find is 'It is ok to leave EA'. But I can't leave, as I am not in it personally. Any thoughts are appreciated!
My spouse and I are both heavily involved with EA, but we nevertheless have significant differences in our philosophies. My spouse's world view is pretty much a central example of EA: impartiality, utilitarianism et cetera. On the other hand, I assign far greater weight to helping people who are close to me compared to helping random strangers[1]. Importantly, we know that we have value differences, we accept it, and we are consciously working towards solutions that are aimed to benefit both of our value systems, with some fair balance between the two. This is also reflected in our marriage vows.
I think that the critical thing is that your SO accepts that:
If your SO cannot concede that much, it's a problem IMO. A healthy relationship is built on a commitment to each other, not on a commitment to some abstract philosophy. Philosophies enters it only inasmuch as they are important to each of you.
That said, I also accept considerations of the form "help X (at considerable cost) if they would have used similar reasoning to decide whether to help you if the roles were reversed".