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!
This may be wildly off, but: have you talked to your partner about this? Do they know that when they talk to you like this, you feel attacked? And that it affects your self-worth? What would they say?
I ask because I think this is in many ways a relationship problem. They are doing something that makes you feel hurt. That's a problem that you could resolve in a number of ways - they could change, you could change, but you need to talk about it.
It might be that the outcome of that conversation is that you decide that you want to be more okay with thinking in this way, or shifting closer to what they believe. And maybe that's already where you are (in which case my apologies). But I don't think you should start out assuming that it's you who needs to change here.