Once again, the Berkeley Parents Network newsletter published an interesting letter, this time by a stay-at-home mother married to a man who is successful in his career but works very long hours.
I know I can relate during certain parts of DH’s career — fortunately for us, there are slower months than others — but like the SAHM in the letter, when DH does work round-the clock and travels, I am unsure how to address it. Yes, it bothers me and leaves me feeling lonely and overwhelmed. But I also appreciate the financial security — something I did not have growing up.
Here is what the mom had to say:
I have been with my husband for 10 years, married for the last five. We have two young children. He is very successful in his career and I feel very grateful that he has a well paying job, we have a nice home, and we are in a good financial place. But…
For the last couple years, as he moved forward in his career, he works longer and longer hours and travels constantly (as in, often, a few days per week.) He’s in advertising, so needs to go to this or that place for the productions. This is an industry that doesn’t seem to put to much value on ”family time” and the days are long.
When traveling, he often doesn’t finish work till late, so then goes out and it’s all expenses paid dinners/drinks at fancy places…often till late because they wrap up late…while I sit at the table with my kids and mac and cheese night after night. I can’t help but feel irritated by this. I do trust him, and he checks in constantly while he is out/away and talks about how much he misses us, but it’s so lonely being the only one at home so often.
When he is in town, it’s long nights and sometimes weekends depending on work demands, but I will say that when he’s off work…his family is his priority and he spends his time with us. He is a loving and gentle man and in other than this, he is very good to us.
We moved around a lot, to follow his career, although now I think we are settled for awhile, but the moves have been tough. I quit my job to be a stay at home mom, and am now living further from family and friends. It’s isolating.
I am depressed. I find myself resenting him for the hours he works, for missing some of our kids’ events, for never being able to schedule things more than a few days out (and even sometimes that is hit or miss.) Just when I think he’ll be around for a bit, boom, it’s more travel and late nights. We fight about his schedule constantly, and he says he’s caught between a rock and a hard place trying to keep his job while still being a good dad/husband.
I am at a crossroads. I know he’s working hard to provide for the family, and yet I would trade in some of the financial security for our family to feel whole again. I’m beginning to question if the job will always come before family, if my resentment will just keep building. Am I being fair? Is this selfish? I’d love to hear from any other women with traveling or workaholic husbands, and how they cope.
Married But Alone
I will be checking out for the responses as I am curious. Luckily for us, DH’s workaholic ways are on and off. Sometimes, like right now, he is working on a book and needs evenings and weekends to focus on work, which means I have to find ways to entertain the kids on my own. But earlier in the year right after elections he did have some downtime, allowing him to spend more time with us and even help around the house quite a bit.
During the crunch times, I have been fortunate to have friends like Amy and Will help me with at least Ari. If there is any piece of advice I have for this mother, it is to join groups and make friends FAST. No one can go at this alone without burning out.
What advice would you have for this mother?
my reaction..
i feel for this woman. it doesn’t sound like much is going to change wrt to her husband’s career. given she is lonely yet financially well off i’d hire a nanny and find work, even part time. that way she might feel less resentful and make connections.
oh yes
Get out of the house, find play-groups or other activities that will give her some chances to talk with other adults.
I have friends in this situation, and they really need their support networks.
yes. absolutely.
I found myself in a similar situation when our kids were small. I was a stay at home mother, in a strange city, with a houseful of small children. My husband worked ALOT…and I, too, felt bad ever complaining because we really needed the financial security. He was also always continuing with education.
So, I found friends and joined groups and causes. As women/mothers, we often need the support of others regardless of our partners’ work habits. When one is lonely and feeling isolated, its very easy to expect a partner to be able and willing to satisfy all needs. That just isn’t really possible and a little much to lay onto anyone. On the other hand, while it’s good to form other relationships and get on with life, there should be some attention paid to the marriage. For awhile, we both found ourselves so involved in our own things that we didn’t even really feel a lot like a couple any longer.
If it’s affordable, I agree
Hiring part-time help and trying to work or volunteer would be a good way to have an outside-of-the-home life. That’s a tough situation for a marriage, and I would feel the same way as this woman. It’s one of the reasons why I’m glad DH hasn’t been on that kind of career track. Having more financial security would be great, but we’re doing ok. In the long run, I’m glad that DH has been able to be a very involved parent while the kids are young.
It’s so hard
because he’s feeling stressed out of his mind with trying to get everything done for work and guilty for missing out at home and if you say ‘we need you around” when he can’t be around then you’ve just added to his stress.
So you push it down and eat Doritos…..just me?
Joining a group is a great idea but only if it’s the right group – moms groups can be hit or miss and if she’s alone then being able to take a course at night school or join a book club may be plenty difficult.
Doritos, no.
Jim Beam on my Fruit Loops? Sure!
Seriously, though- I agree. This lady needs to build a life of her own- volunteering, working, something. She’s in a no-win situation ’cause his work schedule isn’t going to change.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again- a religious group can be the best social outlet around. Free childcare weekly- and cookies!
Local political causes
are also good….especially causes often pursued by women. We used to bring our teenaged kids to help watch the younger kids while we met.
Yeah that
It has to be the right group. I feel like it’s such an easy thing to say to a mom these days “Go find a group!” but finding the right group is a whole other story. It also takes energy to join groups, something that can be in short supply in situations like this.
really good point
I floundered my first six months in Melbourne because I couldn’t find the right group – tried to join a few playgroups, but I just couldn’t break into the cliques. I think Jess was nearly 2 before I could sit back and feel like I’d developed some good, supportive friendships – some with two moms from Jess’s swim class, some from professional contacts as a writer, etc.
it takes time
I started driving my son an hour each way a couple of times a month to play at a friend’s house, because I enjoyed his mom’s company and she wasn’t able to drive to our place. There were other families closer by, but I didn’t click with those moms as much.
New places are hard
we’ve been here 3 years and I have maybe one friend. I know I’m a foul mouthed evil bitch and all but you’d think there’d be two or three people in a city this size who’d hang with me.
it can be so rough
I think timing makes a huge difference, too. We arrived too late for me to get in on the ground floor at a “mother’s group” (most councils in Australia organize groups for women when they’re pregnant and people join then.). A lot of mothers make really tight bonds with the women their mother’s group. I found it impentrable. So I didn’t start making friends until Jess was old enough for toddler activities like swimming. I imagine that if we were to move again now, with Lily being too young for toddler activities and Jess being too young for school, I’d struggle again to find another group until Jess went to school. And if we moved again while the girls were in school, I suspect I’d find it hard to break into a school-aged-based group. It can be so weird.
All of which to say this is why MT has been such a boon for me.
Like Alice Roosevelt Longworth liked to say
If you have nothing good to say about anybody, come sit next to me!
Seriously, it isn’t easy!
It took me close to five years here before I started to make real connections…and then it took me going out and joining groups that would assure I found others pretty much like me. I’m not a just-find-any-other-lonely-mother type. Most of these women bore me to tears.
Oh L C!
We’re not that far from each other. We should hang out midway between us -that would put us in wine country for a meetup, heh heh heh. I can be foulmouthed and evil. God knows what would come out of my mouth on a wine tour.
foul mouthed, evil?
cool! I’ll hang witcha!
Nail on the head
I have friends in town, but they work full-time and their kids are in care. No one in my neighborhood is in my situation and I have no family nearby. To top that off, DH has started traveling, and it may start to be M-F every week. I’m so dreading it but a person feels idiotic complaining about a solid, well-paying job right now. That being said, it isn’t well-paying enough for me to hire a nanny or outside care. I’m pretty much stuck with these kids. I’ve tried doing some volunteer things, but it’s too hard at their ages to drag them along; they need too much supervision because they aren’t the kind of kids who’ll sit still with a coloring book. So I’m pretty lonely right now and it’s been getting to be a bigger & bigger bummer. I’ve tried a few groups and nothing’s clicked; I’ll have to get up the energy & desire to try again this winter. Guess that’s why I spend so much time here & on Facebook!
Nothing wrong with finding
support on-line. In fact, I can be a little resentful that some look down on such support.
I’ve been with an 80-hour-a-week husband, too. Best advice I can give is to find what little time you can together. Even if it’s about 11:00 at night and you, husband and a bottle of wine. Connect every once in a while and let yourself know that you are more than just some little person’s mother.
And in the meantime, you have all of us here.
it’s often an explicit tradeoff
I understand how she’s feeling because I’m in a similar situation, but I think she is being a bit unfair to the poor guy. These days hardly any family gets by on one 40 hr per week job. Most couples have to choose between splitting 60-80 paid hours – equally or unequally – or have one spouse take the home and the other take the paid work. Each has it’s pros and cons.
She wants it both ways – she gets to be a SAHM and she’s fortunate that he has the kind of job that lets her do that. But she needs to accept his side of that deal. Is he a workaholic, or is his priority providing financial support and stability to his dependent family in a weak economy? Maybe it is possible for him to cut back – I don’t know their situation, after all – but he’s in sales and his job may depend on making his numbers every month.
It sounds to me like he’s doing the best he can. If they have more money than they strictly need then at least she has options. But if she’s not happy with her side of the arrangement and she can’t find other sources of emotional support, they may need to revisit this agreement. The SAHM gig can be isolating but if he’s already giving the family all his non-work hours it’s not fair to resent him for that.
I agree with you
that she wants it both ways – wants to be a SAHM but also wants her husband home. I like how you phrased it that most couples split between 60 and 80 hours of paid work.
It sounded to me that this husband is trying to do the best he can with a tough situation – checking in often when he’s away and devoting time to family when he’s home.
We’ve been in similar situations – early marriage I traveled alot, later on DH traveled alot, then in the past few years very little travel for either of us. And starting in a month or so, DH will take a job (fingers crossed!) that is a move up career-wise, but will involve a lot of travel. We’re older, and further along in our marriage than this writer sounds, so I’m hoping we’ll be able to deal both with the separations and with the changes when he’s home.
My advice to this mom is to look at marriage as a long-term commitment. It’s not just about what is happening now, but also about what you are building together – and you are both building that future in different ways. If she has serious doubts about the benefit of the career path her DH is on, they should talk about it. Is this a trade-off they are both wiling to make or should he compromise on the career when the kids are small? Maybe if she participates in an open conversation with her DH, she won’t be so resentful.
been there done that
I totally agree with your advice. She needs to get out there and build her own support network.
Step one – find a sitter or sitters that she can use both on a regular basis and last minute possibilities. Even if it means paying for time you don’t use, having predictable hours to go off and do things is important.
Step two – find something she enjoys. For me, getting involved in my kids’ school has been really rewarding. I’ve made a lot of friends and those friendships have now extended into other areas of my life as we’ve discovered interests beyond just our kids. So now I have my running mom friends, my political mom friends and my happy-to-go-out-for-a-drink-anytime mom friends. Eventually, I’ll have to move beyond the school and I look forward to doing more political activity in the future, but for now, the school is keeping me busy and I’m having a good time. Having mac and cheese for dinner alone with the kids for the third time in a week is a lot easier if you know you’re going out for sushi with your friends as soon as the sitter gets there.
Step three – have a heart to heart with the spouse about future goals. For my husband, he’s always had some pretty specific career goals he is shooting for. While it doesn’t make things better when he’s gone day after day, I know what to expect and I feel like we are in this together even when we are living apart. Friends and sitters don’t make up for real family time so this couple needs to make sure they are both ok with the sacrifices necessary or discuss other options if they both really aren’t on the same page.
Wow
I could have written that letter. In seven short years, my DH has gone from a 40-hour-a-week job with maybe 5 days of travel a year, to a 55-hour-a week-job with 60 days of travel a year. Sure his income has skyrocketed from this starting salary, but I could so relate to this sentence:
Sometimes I feel like we both are pacifying ourselves by buying things, whether it’s a bigger house or a fancy TV or vacation or stuff for the kids. But I know I would trade much of that for a more humane work schedule. But it doesn’t seem to work like that, it’s either feast-or-famine out there.
But what did I do? We moved back up to my hometown so now I have my mom close by. I hired a cleaning service, a landscaper, a nanny ten hours a week and I get my groceries delivered. I figure if I am going to be wo-manning the fort alone from 7 am to 6 pm every night, I am going to have help.
I also think, and I say this more to myself than this letter writer, it’s really not the time to be whining. There are so many people hurting right now, if your husband has a good job, you really shouldn’t be complaining all that much.
yeah, it doesn’t seem to work like that
I would love to have a job and DH would love to work less. Actually the SAHM gig would suit him better than me. But he is savvy in a way I could never be, and his career really took off. He loves his job but it is all or nothing, and there’s no way we could do as well with both of us working unless I found something part time. The way we pacify ourselves is by pouring the extra into the retirement and savings accounts. That should give us the financial freedom to make different choices in the future – he can step down to a less demanding job, or maybe even take some time out from his career (and maybe I can work for a while instead). Depending, of course on health insurance coverage – nothing takes priority over that.
Yeah
The health insurance is a real snag. My DH could definitely start his own business (and I could help him, since we’re in the same field) and maybe we could build a life that was more flexible and more of a partnership. But he is chained to that company for the healthcare benefits.
so been there done that
we are intermittantly BTDT. For me, the worst was when DH was working in internal audit, both in London and here in Melbourne. London was the pits because DH would be travelling 3 weeks out of every five. That really sucked when Jess was a newborn, and it sucked for both of us. When DH was in Melbourne working in audit, it sucked as well, but not as much because there was less travel – only 7 to 10 days out of a month. But I tell you, we were both glad to have those posts behind us.
I feel for both of them. I agree with what’s been said before – making your own networks and finding your own activities is the best remedy. I know for me here in Melbourne, I didn’t stop feeling so stir crazy until the freelancing started picking up and I started meeting people both professionally and socially. To be honest, getting Jess into creche when she was 2 was a marvellous help, too. Having 6-8 hours a day to myself once and then twice a day really helped all of us.
To my mind
A workaholic is someone whose primary relationship is with their job.
Someone who is emotionally investing almost solely in their work, and that feels gut level bad to the partner (and the kids when they are old enough to feel it also). A workaholic will talk most passionately and often about their job and industry, is not available without heavy negotiating (or not at all) for time with the partner or social time with other families, or even if the partner is having a big problem of some sort. They will almost reflexively “need to work” when something comes up – either something social or a family problem that needs attention. Their nonwork friendships out of the family are the sort where they see someone a couple of times a year, or have run aground altogether. It’s just constant work to tear their minds and hearts away from the job.
That’s really different from someone who works long hours because they are in that kind of demanding job or profession. It feels entirely different to the partner, kids, and friends than a “real” workaholic.
I’m not sure the writer is describing a workaholic. She mentions that he checks in, says he misses them, and takes time “off work”. A workaholic is getting most needs met at work (even if the workaholism is fear based) and is never really “off.”
that’s a really good point
I think you make a really useful distinction, Rachel. I think one of the reasons I can deal with DH’s long hours is because he’s not a workaholic – I know he makes family his priority and makes as many opportunities to be with us as he can manage. It’s an uneasy balance and it’s always easy for me to criticise because hey, I envy it when he puts on the work clothes and gets to leave the house in the morning!
I agree with this point too
When my husband is not working, he’s totally focused on the family. There are things he would like to do, like doing DIY projects around the house or spending more time riding his bike, that he gives up so he can spend more time with me and the boys. 40 hour work weeks just don’t exist in his field, so when he’s done with his 60 or 80 hours, he’s here and nowhere else. That’s very different than someone who is emotionally tied to his or her job in the way you describe. My dad was like that and my kids definitely have a very different relationship with their father than I did.
good point
Workaholics work even when they don’t have to work, and they use work as a crutch to not have to do other things (like have a life outside of work, which can be harder than working).
Workaholics also don’t need to work as much as they do. You can be a workaholic at any level. I worked in some goofy analyst-level job that was a forty-hour-a-week job easy. We had a workaholic colleague who lived in the office and had absolutely no life. Now, he didn’t get more done than anyone else, in fact, maybe he got less done. He was just avoiding other issues in his life.
I also think there are just jobs that are 60 to 80 hour a week jobs, and that is that.
Lots of good advice
to which I have little to add. It doesn’t sound like this guy is using work as an excuse to be away — he just has to be away for work. There is possibly not a way for him to work less for less pay — this is the job and these are the requirements. It sounds like he tries to stay connected and fully engage when he is home.
OTOH, if you have small children — you’re tired doing it on your own a lot of the time. And it doesn’t really help in the moment that much to know that your husband doesn’t really want to be away — when the kids are running around screaming and the house is a mess, you just want some help!
Since she’s financially set she should
hire a nanny and work part-time. Getting out of the house, and associating with other adults is going to help her.
Making friends with other moms will help her a lot.
Well this is timely.
DH has worked probably 80 hours this week. I too feel torn because I like the financial security but I get tired of doing it all by myself day in and day out. I work part time but I guess I feel like I never wanted to be the only one to ever put a damn dish in the dishwasher. We never discussed how things would break down, in fact, I encouraged him to do freelance full time because I thought it would give him more time with his family. Boy was I ever wrong.
I didn’t realize that until this very moment–this is the opposite of what I signed up for. To his credit, DH has always encouraged me to get help (e.g., nanny or daycare) just to give me se sanity. But I always felt guilty about that. I won’t anymore.
Don’t feel guilty
If you can get the work or the help, do it. We never discussed how things were going to work because nothing happened the way we expected, so we’ve just done the best we could at the time and tried to survive. But it gets boring just doing what you have to in order to get through a day. We can’t afford care, since I barely work, and I know I can’t get work that would even break us even on the care. So I’m in a crappy loop right now, but I just keep hoping one of these days it will turn around.
Breaking even
I am a little obsessed with the”breaking even” concept. Like, when I bill out, I’ll think, OK, this pays for three weeks’ daycare plus taxes. Or whatever. But sometimes I think, well, they’re his kids too, and the money comes out of the collective pot, so really the issue is whether WE can afford daycare from our budget, not whether I can pay for it with my earnings. Make sense? I mean, in one way it seems only logical to want to come out “ahead,” to earn more than you are spending on daycare. But on the other hand, there are the intangibles–like sanity, or career advancement (or in my case, at least not career-falling-behindness). Try not to worry about whether whether you’d earn enough to offset daycare expenses. If you can afford it, even one day a week, then that’s what you should do.
to me child care is a necessity not an extra
I completely agree that the concept of breaking even is not the right way to think about it – the paycheck is a family paycheck and the child care expenses are family expenses.
I work very part-time and I don’t break even on summer babysitting. I work to stay current so that I can get back into it when I’m ready (if I’m ever ready.) It’s also an insurance policy should something happen to my husband’s career.
But when a spouse works a lot and you are effectively a single parent, having some help is crucial even if you aren’t working or making making enough to cover the care. If there are family and friends nearby that allow a parent to get that care for free, great, but in today’s world so many of us live far from our extended family. Even a few hours a week makes a big difference in coping with taking care of kids alone.
Wow does this hit a nerve for me!
I spent years in a state of being thankful and being angry about how much time my DH devoted to his work. Like so many issues, this one is extremely complex, bringing up societal norms, historical issues, ways in which our specific culture views work…etc. OY.
I don’t have any magical answers….but in hindsight based on what I experienced (and I had a lot of anger and resentment during portions of my marriage)….I would offer some ideas…
that is all.
xo
Once again…
What would we do without your words of wisdom, Karen? This makes sense to me.
all things ebb and flow, right? a long journey (whether marriage, friendship, parenting, even physical journeys) has to have mountains and valleys, dry and wet spells…when I think that I have been married almost 30 years I also realize that experiences sometimes seem eternally long and also gone in the blink of an eye. …. I don’t have answers for any one really…just the wistful realization how fast days, weeks, months, years, lives pass. The more we can enjoy that time and let go of some of the things that bog us down, and that ultimately don’t really matter at all, the better off our time will be and how much better we feel and act because of that. Time is short, that is what I know for sure.
I may print this out and pin it up somewhere
Thank you.
awwww….
if it somehow has helped in any way, then that’s a good thing
My husband was a trucker.
He was home from sometime after the kids went to bed Friday night to about noon-ish on Sunday. That was it. And he slept a lot during that time, because he had been lying on his logbooks to get more hours in. (All truckers do.)
I often say that I was functionally singleparenting during both kids’ infancies, and really, I was. We did talk a lot on the phone and kept in touch about overall policies and aims in regards to how we were raising the kids, which helped a lot with discipline issues when he was home. I made sure I had hobbies and interests, and friends I could hang out with. It helped that we are polyamorous, so I wasn’t dealing with some of the potential paranoia and jealousy issues, and neither was he. But he was very very glad to get off the road, and I don’t think much would get him back out there again.
It is tough.
I think all my friends are sick of hearing me whine about my DH’s schedule. At least it is sort of seasonal, and right now is the good time. There are many weeks where he is not home before 11 pm.
Everybody’s pretty much said it all … some jobs just require it and there’s really not much you can do if you don’t want to stand in the way of somebody doing the job he either a) has, lucky in this economy or b) wants to do.
It sure isn’t easy with small kids, though. :/
We both work FT outside the home and
the workaholic thing is a real struggle. No matter what job he has held my guy has ALWAYS been completely consumed by it. working, thinking about work, talking about work…..24/7. It’s like he is not really “here” most of the time and we miss him. Kids now teenagers and I feel sad for what he has missed of their childhoods. I have no idea what to do. this has been the biggest struggle of our marriage. he’s a great guy and I don’t want a divorce, but this is not what I had in mind when we got married. all the missed weekends, cancelled vacations….lost time….
this has me feeling sadness
too…in my marriage there were lots of missed opportunities. i know i felt sad then and realize now that in my family’s case, it is more accurate to understand that i felt bad for my kids and for me too in terms of lost time. we are the ones who wanted more. i think if it had been a desire on dh’s part, the work focus would have changed.
i write that from a place of compassion in that i don’t blame him for the whole of the situation — it is too complex an issue and has too many moving parts to have one person carry the entire control over it. his wanting to be successful at work (and that is individually defined as to what success is or isn’t) was a huge driver for him for many, also very complicated, reasons. where we lived and live is an expensive area….as we raised our kids we lived a frugal lifestyle and we are both by nature, savers and don’t like to carry debt which helped us as we got more economic reserves.
for us the situation turned out that dh was able to stop working for pay at a fairly young age, but i’m sure for many, many and surely most, that is not the case, and certainly not in this current economic environment.
and when we were experiencing many years of 120 hour work weeks, and unending global travel, we had no knowledge that we would be eventually in a different more secure place which enabled him to do something vastly different with his time and not worry about making money. it’s hard to be in a place of unknowing and sacrificing so much seemingly every single day.
there are no easy answers is what i have learned …. and like so many things related to families, one thing may or may not work for someone else’s family. life is often just extremely taxing and difficult….but thankfully, it is ever-changing too in exponential and unexpected ways.
the thing I keep telling myself
is Men frequently define themselves by their work. It’s central to their self image. Women (even if they have a demanding career) usually think of themselves both in terms of the job and the family side of their lives. it’s a different perspective. thanks for your thoughts — so helpful to know there is another person out there….hugs to {{karen}}!
HUGS to you too.
And thanks for sending me some! We all need emotional boosters from each other…glad if my comments helped you. The memories I have are both positive and negative. MTer site reminds me of my own journey. I am grateful for all the stories here because I feel we forget sometimes how much we have experienced and how we’ve grown, day to day and year in and year out. As we begin to be able to look back with some distance, it is very clear how far we have traveled, for good, for bad, for both.
xoxox
I had to sit my DH down
a couple of times before it really sank in that childhood is fleeting. He travelled during our son’s infancy and sometimes I felt it wasn’t strictly necessary. I would tell him, “A couple weeks or even a month isn’t a big deal in our marriage, but that’s 25% (or whatever) or your son’s entire life.” I was mostly coming at it from a position of, You’re missing out here. I don’t want you to have regrets.
I think my case was helped by the fact that DH’s father was very loving and as involved as he could be, and DH had a solid role model.
We also had to talk some about the reality of giving your life’s blood to an employer who, let’s face it, doesn’t particularly care about you or your family. After he was laid off following a merger, I never had to bring that one up again
He was hurt and shocked but it wasn’t something he could learn from me telling him.
DH’s ambitions have certainly been tempered by being a family man. But, so have mine. I loved research and would have been happy spending hours and hours in a lab, but it wasn’t compatible with the kind of parenting I wanted to do. I deliberately trained for a position in public schools, knowing I’d have a schedule like my son’s (including winter break, summer, etc.). I don’t think it’s necessary for both spouses to do that but it helped in our family that at least one of us made that choice. There have been times when one income would have been enough, but DH’s business is very up and down so we just tried to bank the extra against a rainy day (which, as it turns out, has literally and figuratively arrived at our house!). DH now talks about beloved projects as things he’ll do during retirement. And he’ll probably never win a Peabody….
My co-worker is a workaholic. She says she never got married because she was too busy with work. What it seems to mean in practice is that she is quite inefficient, and spends probably 4 – 6 more hours in the office each day than she really needs to. (She’s usually there around 12 hours a day, and makes sure everyone knows it.) Meanwhile our site supervisor spends about 10 hours a day at work and gets an incredible amount done. I agree, the distinction between “workaholic” and “person with a big job” are two different things.
I hear you
All the babysitters, friends, other “interests” and “support networks” in the world don’t make up for the fact that there’s this one marriage and this one childhood, and that’s it, that’s all she wrote.
Similar to the life of a military wife
Have a thought for all those military spouses out there.
Add the fear factor when serving members are posted overseas, and this posting could have been written by any one of their civilian partners.