Technically, this happened several years ago. I took the job I had spent ten years preparing for and it has had numerous negative ripple effects.

I have a PhD in an industry applicable but pretty specific subject area. Competition for faculty positions in my field is fierce and generally requires postdocs for five or more years and moving around a lot. My spouse wasn't interested in that instability and told me that she would only be willing to move if I found a tenure track position, but preferably after she had been in her job for five years. So I got a well paying industry job, but it did have some opportunities to interface with academia at times and even teach occasionally. It was a prestigious organization ( realize that now because I tell people I worked there and they go on about what they think about the work the place does) and looking back, I realize that working there was even more of a once in a lifetime opportunity than becoming a professor.

However after taking the position, I quickly began to feel stressed out from the high work demands and the feeling that I wasn't doing what I was meant to do. Shortly after I took the job, I was contacted by a colleague about a faculty job opportunity at their university which precisely aligned with the work I did for my dissertation. I talked to my wife, who encouraged me to apply so as to not have regrets about not trying. So I applied even though it hadn't been five years in her career and the location wasn't as good for her industry or really any job not at the university. I honestly didn't think I had a chance and figured I was just helping the search committee get a larger pool so as to impress the admin at their institution and help with future requests for positions.

Well, I got offered the job, precisely at the moment when I was most strained at work. I was putting in 60 hrs with commute and was even working at home after that. My wife was doing more and more of the housework and our relationship was strained by how depressed I was getting and how little time we had together ( basically only weekends). Even when we were out having fun on weekends, I was thinking about work. I would regularly wake up in the middle of the night in panic about work or not doing what I felt like I was meant to do.

I talked to my wife and she gave me permission to accept it. I felt a mix of feelings. Part of me really thought this was what I was meant to do and that the timing, just when I was making my LinkedIn account open to recruiters and was starting to look for other jobs, was a sign that this was what I should do. But I also really worried about the impact on my wife, who would be leaving a cushy, well paying job as well as moving away from family and friends ( I had few friends apart from my wife as my friends moved away after finishing graduate school). I felt like I both had to accept and also not accept it, so I went with what I wanted to do. I now see how incredibly selfish that was.

It's been several years and since then so much has gotten worse for my wife. A stress related chronic illness has returned, she's working over 40 hrs a week btw a part time job and freelancing and despite this making 1/3 of her old income. There is little room for advancement and she has lost the will to pursue a career path that she was passionate about. Because our net income dropped in half, we're much more worried about money and my retirement savings rate is way less. A parent in law has been experiencing a paranoia related mental health crisis for over a year and is now in danger of becoming homeless and we're a thousand miles away unable to be there to take them to the appointments they need to attend in order to get services. If we back there, none of that might have happened, since we could have intevened earlier. We used to exercise every day but are always working or catching up on housework and no longer have the time so our health is way worse.

I do feel more at peace about my job and think I'm making the world better by educating students in skills that will get them good jobs but it's absolutely not worth it because someone else could be doing that instead of me. The one positive is that my wife and I have more time together, especially because my commute is a ten minute walk and in some ways our marriage is strengthened by that. But that could have happened before if I had just gotten a handle on my own anxiety and depression and perhaps found some sort of work from home job.

I see now that my feeling that I had to be a professor was just the result of what is essentially brainwashing that one gets in graduate school, making one feel that anything short of a tenure track position is a suboptimal career path. If I could get in a time machine, I would go back and never apply for this job. I think about this almost everyday and when I wake up at night, which still occasionally happens.

TL;DR I became a professor and my wife got sick from stress, a family member had a mental health crisis, and we're always worried about money.