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

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[quote=Anonymous]I have been in a similar position with my husband.
I was listening to a marriage counselor on a podcast the other day, and she talked about how people with avoidant attachment can switch to being preoccupied attachment in another relationship, but it’s hard for them to switch into being secure.
I feel like for me (and maybe for you), DH and I can both switch roles within our relationship. So, he’s gone all of the time. (My husband is a surgeon. He works long, unpredictable hours and will even pick up additional hours or weekends even though we have no plans for the money.) And then when he is home, he is either avoiding us by looking up stuff for work or decompressing OR he is way too far up my butt for lack of a better term, and won’t let me alone. This means that I am never alone unless I plan childcare for a time I know DH won’t be home. Also, even weirder, DH is never alone with our children, which i think makes for an odd relationship.

I am just as bad, though. I tend to vacillate between being avoidant and preoccupied too. Sometimes, I’m fine with DH being gone. I’m proud of being able to manage the household on my own, and I even get a little irritated when he comes home unexpectedly and messes up my routines or wants time that I didn’t have carved out for him. Other times, I get really irritated that I have to be alone all of the time when I am married to the man I love who is the father of my children, and I beg him to get a job where he will be home more.

I don’t have any solution, but it makes things easier for me to know that this isn’t just a simple fix that DH won’t do. This pattern is part of deep seated personality traits in both of us, and I am making him just as crazy as he is making me!
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