My wife does not think she needs to make money. What do I do?

To start out- I love my wife and want to support her in everything she does.

My wife had been a Realtor when I met her for nearly 8 years. At the time she said she made good money (1-2 closings a month worth $2-4k). For the first 2 years, her income fluctuated wildly. Sometimes she would go 3-4 months without a closing, but then would bring in $15-20k in a singular month. She would blame the dips in income on external events that seemed plausible at the time.

We got married after 2 years. The ups and downs continued for about 5 years when the housing market tanked. Then the income went to nearly 0. She was working more than ever before, but deals kept falling apart at closing. This went on for over 3 years when she finally decided to give up.

Four years later, she has now bounced in and out of part time, or entry level positions and has been very miserable at these jobs. She has started several companies only to get bogged down in the day to day operations.

Right now she is working as a contractor 12 hours a week making $18 an hour, and working on a cookie/ bakery business. To get the business going, she is staying up until 2-3am every night, and our lives are very chaotic trying to make room for this business in our house.

She thinks that the $800 a month she is now making is enough for our family, and does not understand why I am looking for her to bring in enough income to equate to a $12/ hour job.

Life is filled with stories about guys that drift through life bouncing from one job to another and never finding his place. The wife/ girlfriend puts up with it for X amount of time then tells him he has to grow up. Does the same go true for women?

My wife is in her mid 40s. We have a mountain of debt, and no retirement savings (what we had all went to pay off/ down some debts). If she cannot begin earning enough to help wipe out our debt and start rebuilding our retirement fund, we are going to end up in the poor house in our old age.

I make good money (nearly 6 figures), but our massive student loan debt, medical debt, and remaining credit card debt (from when real estate went bad) eats up all of my income and I am only contributing 6% to my 401k. In 2-3 years, if I am not contributing the full $17k to my 401, then I will never be able to retire and will end up working until I die.

Ack- I do not know what to do.My wife has lived a life of poor choices and freely admits it. I try to stop her from making bad decisions, but then she gets mad that I am not supporting her.