If your spouse works a lot, how do you manage expectations about your own availability?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Honestly I would tell him straight out "I am not available 24/7 for you to come in and out of family life as you please. I have a schedule too. We can talk about you changing jobs."

Yep!!

[Anonymous]

I would have a regular sitter who comes three or more evenings a week. You will have time to exercise, meet friends, talk on the phone. I had this when my kids were younger. She would help with homework and feed them dinner. It helped me from burning out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly I would tell him straight out "I am not available 24/7 for you to come in and out of family life as you please. I have a schedule too. We can talk about you changing jobs."

This.

+1. It sounds like you've made a very reasonable suggestion/request multiple times and he's not willing to even discuss it. I'd keep repeating this until he wants to have a real conversation. This really isn't your problem to solve.

[Anonymous]

Things got better for me after RTO. My husband is banned from teleworking so finally his job is closer to 40 hrs a week. I now have regular friends outings and a book club!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My husband works a lot and unpredictable hours. I work, but less and do the vast majority of the childcare and housework. I have expressed my preference for him to work less and earn less repeatedly but have generally made peace that this is how it’s going to be. So I am basically on call for the kids 24/7 (one has SN) and will occasionally need to catch up on my own work in the evening if I’ve been out a lot for appointments. I also tend to wake up early to exercise and am the one to get up with kids if they wake up early. My husband routinely has nights he works very late (past midnight) and then the next night he might crash as soon as the kids are asleep. But he gets frustrated if he randomly has a night he’s not working or exhausted and I am not available, either because I am tired from a super early wake up or have a call scheduled with a friend or something like that. Increasingly it’s hard to shake the feeling he expects me to just be available and waiting for him at all times. I have tried asking that we pick one night he won’t work so I can make sure I’m available but he doesn’t feel he can commit to that. I still find him fun and interesting and I know he’s trying to prioritize our kids in his own way but I am tired of being blamed for us not spending time together when the majority of the time it’s his work that’s in the way. I know There are a lot of spouses that work a lot on here - how do you manage this?

Hire help so stress of logistics doesn't make you resent each other or the kids. Spend happy time together with kids. If two salaries doesn't allow hiring help then go part time to save your sanity and family.

[Anonymous]

Did you not know you are starting a family with an ambitious workaholic? Did he not want kids or just didn't know that kids need more than sperm and food?

[Anonymous]

If you can't hire a nanny, hire a therapist to teach both of you to work like a team.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would have a regular sitter who comes three or more evenings a week. You will have time to exercise, meet friends, talk on the phone. I had this when my kids were younger. She would help with homework and feed them dinner. It helped me from burning out.

This is a good idea! (DP)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kids are teens now, but I could have written your post five or ten years ago. It was really a failure of empathy. He just didn’t understand what my life was like.

The main thing that helped me was having a lot of friends who were married to men and women in his field or other similar unpredictable jobs. It just made the craziness of living this kind of lifestyle bearable. People who have normal jobs and are married to other people with normal jobs just kind of feel sorry for you or think you are crazy. Even people with spouses who travel for work generally know when they will be gone and when they will be home. It’s nice to have friends who understand.

I mean... yeah - how is this not true?
PS It is of course nice to have friends who understand and I am sorry your husband wasn't empathetic - that makes it even harder.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kids are teens now, but I could have written your post five or ten years ago. It was really a failure of empathy. He just didn’t understand what my life was like.

The main thing that helped me was having a lot of friends who were married to men and women in his field or other similar unpredictable jobs. It just made the craziness of living this kind of lifestyle bearable. People who have normal jobs and are married to other people with normal jobs just kind of feel sorry for you or think you are crazy. Even people with spouses who travel for work generally know when they will be gone and when they will be home. It’s nice to have friends who understand.

I mean... yeah - how is this not true?
PS It is of course nice to have friends who understand and I am sorry your husband wasn't empathetic - that makes it even harder.

+1 I have a neighbor who is in this situation and at the end of the day, I do mostly feel sorry for them/think they're a little nuts. She is constantly complaining about how hard it is to do everything herself but doesn't hire help or take any other concrete action to make her life more manageable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would have a regular sitter who comes three or more evenings a week. You will have time to exercise, meet friends, talk on the phone. I had this when my kids were younger. She would help with homework and feed them dinner. It helped me from burning out.

This is a good idea! (DP)

This is fair to OP but still doesn’t solve the issue of her DH believing she should drop everything the second he is free.

[Anonymous]

Well, I agree with the poster that says he lacks empathy — which would be a major challenge for me.

But it sounds like you have plenty of money so it is nuts that you are not hiring help. In my marriage, I am the primary earner and I travel a couple of times a month — but my husband also works a lot. One kid has profound SN. The other has inattentive ADHD and some anxiety.

Our kids are teens and we have simply had tons of help over the years. That doesn’t mean we aren’t super involved, but you cannot do it all — particularly when you are still doing diapers changes, baths, etc for a 16 year old that is a baby cognitively. Sometimes it helps to see exactly what “help” can look like.

Here is what that looks like. We generally have help 7 days a week. The demographic is usually a kid in college or a recent college grad. They are often looking towards grad school in a world where SN experience might look good for them (med school, PT, child life specialist, etc). I can generally be really flexible about scheduling. I just need help — although some amount of after school hours are the best. I usually have two people at a time since no one usually wants to actually work seven days a week, and I play to whatever their specific strengths are. If they like to cook, they can help with cooking. If not, they can do other stuff. Right now, I’ve got a recent college grad who is willing to split her days between mornings and afternoons. She comes at 6:15 and quietly gets our profound SN kid ready for school and into her van at 6:45. At that point my other kid and I are up and she packs her lunch and makes both of us breakfast while we get ready. She unloads the dishwasher that ran the night before. Between her, my husband and I somebody takes the other kid to school. For her second shift, she picked my less-SN kid up from school. I took over with that kid to work on homework with her (the ADHD kid). I asked the sitter to make the physical flash cards for the 43 words my kid has to learn by next Tuesday while I was helping with other homework and drove her to an activity. Sitter was keeping an eye on other kid and doing kid laundry during the two hour activity (and I came back home to work more). She then picked up the less-Sn kid from the activity and left. Somewhere in there, she also helped with dinner. It is immensely helpful to have a third person in the home. This sitter doesn’t come every morning. My husband and I have been splitting mornings for years. We go week by week on which mornings she can come and which days after school she can work. When she is there, it just takes the pressure off.

[Anonymous]

It feels like her DH is a physician and feels like her life should revolve around him. This requires therapy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
If you can afford it .. Hire help...ASAP
Your marriage will thank you.

Short of a live in nanny who gets up with the kids, how would that help?

Ma’am hire that help ..
Then come back and tell us all how it’s going

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I didn’t mean to imply that he never spends time with us. He makes it to most of the kids games and will generally make it to like an extended family event or social event. But some weekends he ends up doing work after the kids are asleep or not feeling great because he didn’t sleep enough all week especially if he traveled. We do often spend time together one weekend night but he (and I) would prefer more. I think I have been doing more on my own lately as I have basically assumed he isn’t available most of the time and I have he doesn’t like that.

He seems to just want a bangmaid on call.