Living apart on weekdays because of job

[Anonymous]

I'd move with him but keep your house.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How much is twice his salary? I think it's a bell curve - from $20K to $40K is not meaningless but it's not enough to provide a replacement for the care lost by one parent. I think $250k-500k to $500k-1m is the top of the bell curve - those are significant amounts of money that could make a big difference in terms of lifestyle down the road (i.e. college) but could also provide coverage for additional assistance now. Beyond $1m, how much more money do you need?

Having said the above, my salary, and my husband's salary, are in the $250k-500k range and we wouldn't do this kind of set up for more money but we love our life and what we have set up and neither of us would be willing to be away from our kids that much.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How much is twice his salary? I think it's a bell curve - from $20K to $40K is not meaningless but it's not enough to provide a replacement for the care lost by one parent. I think $250k-500k to $500k-1m is the top of the bell curve - those are significant amounts of money that could make a big difference in terms of lifestyle down the road (i.e. college) but could also provide coverage for additional assistance now. Beyond $1m, how much more money do you need?

Going from 300k to 600k. We don't NEED to do this to survive, which somehow makes the decision harder.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, what a great parent! He wants to check out of 70% of being a father to his children?

Some people really should not have children. Just divorce him and get your half. He won't be around for custody, so you'll get more than 50%.

Why not pp? I don’t know op or her husband, but doubling the salary is not something to sneer at for most people. That’s opportunity to improve savings, college savings and improve potential for higher salary down the road. Providing for kids is also part of being a parent, why discount this aspect?

Because money doesn't buy a parent? Jesus. If you don't want to be around your children, don't have them. Children have no choice in this world, the very least we can provide is our time and attention. They are going to be out of the house in no time, they have 6 and 8 years left. This man is going to miss 4 & 5.5 years equivalent of those 6/8 years left. He's going to miss literal years of their life. I'm sorry you don't want your husband around much, but that is an extreme amount of time he's checking out of being a parent. I'm not going to pretend I think someone who would willingly miss 70% of the time with their children is a good parent.

He already doesn't want to be a parent at home, per op. Now he's trying to move away from his children. He doesn't want to be a parent. Just divorce him and he can pay child support. There is no point in being married with children to someone who doesn't want to be married with children.

OP said she does everything already anyway- how involved is he with the kids during the week as it is? I ask this because my own DH is not very involved with our 3 kids (1 in middle school 2 in high school) on weekdays. And not due to working long hours- he is home by 5pm, maybe 6pm at the latest. He eats dinner with whoever is around, and then goes in the den and watches tv for the rest of the evening. If any one of our kids were to disappear, it would be days before he even noticed TBH. He does not know their day to day schedules in terms of sports, activities etc. at all. Being teens, they are often in their rooms when at home. For example, I doubt my DH has spoken to our DD since maybe Sunday? And of course it is Wednesday.

Obviously not at all an ideal situation (I’m certainly not happy with it) but if OP’s household is anything like mine, the dad being “gone & away from his kids” during the week would not really make any difference anyway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DH just got a job offer 3 hours away that pays double of what he gets now, and the job offers a house and a food stipend so $0 cost there. Work M-F, come back Fri-Sun every weekend. Our kids are 10 and 12. They will miss DH obviously but also do not want to switch schools and miss friends. What will this do to our life and relationship? We've been in separate bedrooms and not intimate for a decade.

"We've been in separate bedrooms and not intimate for a decade."

Then nothing will change. Enjoy your alone time.

[Anonymous]

Me Husabnd is about to start a new life less you and those kids


Yikes.

[Anonymous]

That^

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, what a great parent! He wants to check out of 70% of being a father to his children?

Some people really should not have children. Just divorce him and get your half. He won't be around for custody, so you'll get more than 50%.

Why not pp? I don’t know op or her husband, but doubling the salary is not something to sneer at for most people. That’s opportunity to improve savings, college savings and improve potential for higher salary down the road. Providing for kids is also part of being a parent, why discount this aspect?

Because money doesn't buy a parent? Jesus. If you don't want to be around your children, don't have them. Children have no choice in this world, the very least we can provide is our time and attention. They are going to be out of the house in no time, they have 6 and 8 years left. This man is going to miss 4 & 5.5 years equivalent of those 6/8 years left. He's going to miss literal years of their life. I'm sorry you don't want your husband around much, but that is an extreme amount of time he's checking out of being a parent. I'm not going to pretend I think someone who would willingly miss 70% of the time with their children is a good parent.

He already doesn't want to be a parent at home, per op. Now he's trying to move away from his children. He doesn't want to be a parent. Just divorce him and he can pay child support. There is no point in being married with children to someone who doesn't want to be married with children.

OP said she does everything already anyway- how involved is he with the kids during the week as it is? I ask this because my own DH is not very involved with our 3 kids (1 in middle school 2 in high school) on weekdays. And not due to working long hours- he is home by 5pm, maybe 6pm at the latest. He eats dinner with whoever is around, and then goes in the den and watches tv for the rest of the evening. If any one of our kids were to disappear, it would be days before he even noticed TBH. He does not know their day to day schedules in terms of sports, activities etc. at all. Being teens, they are often in their rooms when at home. For example, I doubt my DH has spoken to our DD since maybe Sunday? And of course it is Wednesday.

Obviously not at all an ideal situation (I’m certainly not happy with it) but if OP’s household is anything like mine, the dad being “gone & away from his kids” during the week would not really make any difference anyway.

So your husband hates you and his children, and your advice to OP is “my husband wouldn’t notice if one of his children was missing - but who cares”?

Maybe you should reflect on why you’re encouraging other women to put up with abuse from subpar men, because yikes girl, that life ain’t it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you work, OP? If not, you should all move.

I do work. My job is tied to where we currently live, but I can somewhat easily find a new job. It actually seems like the kids will prefer this set up -- they don't want to move

Of course they don't, but you're the parents and have to think about the deeper impact of having a weekend dad.

Yes, hive mind, please help me think through the long term impacts of this for my marriage, family unit and kids

They probably already have a skewed idea of marriage based on your current situation, and this certainly won't help.

[Anonymous]

A decade is a long time to go w/out marital intimacy imo.

So I think this set-up would work considering the current dynamic of your marriage.

[Anonymous]

I had a woman colleague do this for five or more years, don’t remember how old her kids were at the time. She really liked her job, but eventually decided to find a job close to home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DH just got a job offer 3 hours away that pays double of what he gets now, and the job offers a house and a food stipend so $0 cost there. Work M-F, come back Fri-Sun every weekend. Our kids are 10 and 12. They will miss DH obviously but also do not want to switch schools and miss friends. What will this do to our life and relationship? We've been in separate bedrooms and not intimate for a decade.

"We've been in separate bedrooms and not intimate for a decade."

Then nothing will change. Enjoy your alone time.

This.

[Anonymous]

There is zero way you should do this long term unless you basically decide you would have divorced anyway. Now, let’s imagine you divorced and he moved three hours away — everyone would basically think he was a terrible dad.

At ages 10 and 12, you move!! You don’t plan for kids to not live in the same city as their dad for as many as 8 years. Now, you don’t have to move right away. But you move.

I say this as someone whose dad had a career where he often moved in the winter and then we moved when the school year ended. I probably did that 5 times as a kid (including in high school). That was fine. It was at most 6 months. My sister has done it with her husband a couple times for up to 18 months. But, her husband flew out Monday morning and was home Thursday night. It was very hard, but made sense because he has jobs that he knows won’t last more than 1-2 years.

If you don’t want to move immediately, ok. Make sure he loves the job first. Take your time figuring out where to live. But don’t make spilt kids from their parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This was the exact arrangement that happened during my childhood but it was a pay cut after a layoff and failed job search.

As a kid, it was good. My dad brought a lot of tension into the house and a new job arrangement relieved it. I did have to change my activities. I was going to join a travel soccer club but instead did more low-key sports for a year or two then switched to school-based sports.

My parents had not been happy and the arrangement gave everyone space. Interestingly, when my dad retired moved back when I was in college, their relationship became a very deep loving and supportive friendship- like an ideal golden years relationship.

As someone going through an unwanted divorce now, I wish my DH had considered creative alternatives to blowing our family up.

One note of warning: people will make comments to you and the kids unless this is some kind of altruistic job, like medicine or firefighting. Let it roll off your back. I promise it is better than divorce.

That’s ridiculous. Nobody’s going to make a comment. Nobody cares and why would anybody know that’s the most ridiculous thing to say I was separated for an entire two years and we were nesting so we were each moving in and out of the house every other day and no one had a clue when we travel for weeks at a time back-and-forth nobody knows any difference. Nobody cares about these things and saying that is not any reason to not do an alternative arrangement in fact, I think this alternative arrangement is ideal and for the record sometimes divorces are not awful at all and it’s best for everybody but in this scenario, it doesn’t sound like a divorce is needed and the perfect alternative of this situation is actually fine. Nobody cares.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DH just got a job offer 3 hours away that pays double of what he gets now, and the job offers a house and a food stipend so $0 cost there. Work M-F, come back Fri-Sun every weekend. Our kids are 10 and 12. They will miss DH obviously but also do not want to switch schools and miss friends. What will this do to our life and relationship? We've been in separate bedrooms and not intimate for a decade.

Meanwhile my ex divorced me because she said she was bored and needed to find herself lol. I didn't cheat, sex was great, and I was even the primary parent.

Its interesting how some women will never divorce while others will do so over trivial things.

In my case I made 4x my ex salary. So as you can imagine, she is making more not working from most people because of money transferred to her.