Are my friends right?

they just don't have any time in between appointments

Everyone has time in between some appointments to send a quick text to a spouse who is at home and would like to know their ETA,
I doubt the OP is texting him all day long and expecting him to respond.

He is being inconsiderate

The other jobs that you mentioned are irrelevant to the OPs specific situation

How would leaving improve the situation? You’d (presumably) be the resident parent, with your ex having your DD every other weekend at most. So you’d still be doing all the work of raising her by yourself, but with a load of financial strain thrown in.

If you left him, would you be looking to date, in search of a new, more emotionally involved partner? Would you have time to date as a single mother with near 100% custody of your child?

I was in a similar situation to you for my child-raising years - I worked part time and was the primary parent while my DH worked in finance, leaving home before 5am to commute into the City and often not getting home until 10pm, which meant he went straight to bed and did it all again the next morning. The kids basically never saw him during the week as he’d be gone before they got up and got back after they’d gone to bed.

But his salary put both DC through 14 years of private school, paid for their bachelors and masters degrees (so they could start their adult lives with no debt), and meant we could give them both six figure house deposits. We’ve given them the best educational and financial start in life we could, and ensured that while they may not be rich, they’ll always be comfortable. That for me was the whole point - I don’t regret any of the years of effective single parenthood that got us here.

i bet he’s a great Dr and he’s doing the right thing concentrating at work!

Enjoy Disneyland you are able to go to at a very expensive time of year (maybe what your friends mean about all the luxuries you get). You can’t have it all your way op. He is working his ass off to provide for you. Your friends know him/ you better than anyone on here so I’d go with their view.

If there was the option for him to work less hours less money so all the things you have would need to be swapped for make do uses like cars/ house/ days out/ holidays/ clothing- I expect you’d soon send him back to work wanting the life you’ve got used to. Especially knowing what he was like before you had a dc.

if he is staying late when its (not an emergency) he should probably let you know.

expecting check ins while someone is at work Dr or not is unreasonable.

i do thinking it is fair to have reasonable expectations around work even with a DR. do you think it will ease once he becomes more senior.

have a conversation about what he can realistically do to better communicate and to be consistent with coming home.

I think this is to be expected when you’re in a relationship with a doctor. Sounds like he’s dedicated to his job but also to his family.

I could have written this a few years ago. Also married to a hospital doctor. Try asking him why he’s late, mine invariably has an absolute horror story to tell and it does make you see that the workload is something else entirely, I couldn’t hack it.

It is hard though. My husband like yours if he’s at home is great, but that time is very limited. Would I choose this if I’d known? Probably not, but then I hear stories of just how awful some other men are when they aren’t working as much. At least mine is great when he’s not at work!

Also do compare the workload some other partners have, some are working equally awful hours for a lot less financially. The grass isn’t always greener.

I now accept it, I am ok being alone with the kids, it gets far easier as they get older and I’ve got good friends and family. Since accepting his job is an arse and that he can’t actually help it I’ve been a lot happier.

I know exactly how you’re feeling though, There’s a reason why the NHS refers to its staff as the NHS family, it’s certainly the only family that has any time spent on it!

I think all too often we assume people work similar jobs to us, i.e. office and desk, with networking/ comms tasks.

A few examples of jobs where you won't have your phone for long periods:

• high security environments (no personal phones allowed)
• warehouse worker (prohibited by rules/ signal jammers in place)
• professional footballer/ other athlete/ coach (no phones rules/ long training sessions)
• pilot/ cabin crew (changing now but prior to recent times, no signal/wifi)
• barrister/ other type of public speaking for extended periods (you can't exactly text from stage!)
• film/tv (somewhat changing now but used to have phones off rules, plus no breaks for extended periods)
• etc, etc, etc

I have a desk job and tend to put my phone away during office hours as I need to focus, just no need for it. I can't think of anything on my phone that couldn't wait. Generally in life I don't like checking my phone frequently - why, to what end?

It's unlikely your GP will be texting in between appointments, too, they just don't have any time in between appointments. With medical/ action jobs you are often 'in the zone' and want to keep your mind on the job, not checking your phone.

When was he supposed to be back?

We have no personal mobile policy in our work. Mine goes in locker and don't look at it until end of shift. If needed in an emergency there are several landlines which relay things to me via work number

Yes I’m sure if he was treating your relative you’d excuse him from examining them to text his wife.

I’m with your friends in not asking you to leave. Leaving isn’t always the best option. He’s at work. His work is demanding and can be a life or death situation. It’ll be different if when at home with his family, he isn’t present in its real sense but it doesn’t siujd like so.
Speak to him exactly about how you feel.

Your friends’ standards are very low, some posters’ standards are very low.

50.04% of doctors are female in the U.K. How do you think families would function if they behaved like this?

The press had me believing that doctors are run off their feet, no time to eat or have a wee etc. It's actually very cheering to hear that that's not true

It isn’t true, they are busy yes, ( just like all other professionals) but not too busy to send a quick text every once in a while

You married a hospital doctor. He is prioritising his patients not spending time texting home. Sorry, but that is reality. Have you not registered the problems in the NHS? There is a massive shortage of doctors and that means those that are on duty are seriously overstretched. It isn't great for family life, but before Covid and WFH neither was two working parents in professional jobs with commute times (my experience). It's stressful but you either struggle through it or become a single parent which will almost certainly be worse.

I guess you knew what way it was before you had a child, what made you think it was going to be any different when you had your dd.

I barely speak to my DH during the working day. We are busy working and only contact each other if one of us needs something or in an emergency. We don’t send chit chat texts.

What kind of communication are you expecting from your DH during his working day? Chit chat communication? If so, I think you’re being unreasonable.

Yes he could respond to your “when are you leaving “ texts, but are you sure he carries his phone with him at all times? Maybe he hasn’t seen your text because he’s dealing with an emergency.

He's a Dr who works in a hospital. Why didn't you expect it to be like this?

Yes @Ammamamam how dare you feel unimportant to the man who professes to love and your DD but puts you both last to his career.

What a princess you are!

Second that.

I'm not sure how the rules are now as my parents are semi-retired so they can leave at 4 and also do more desk work so can have their phone on them, but the rules used to be that you put your personal phone away while you're at work, and only carry the work phone.

You have patience back-to-back or deadlines, especially in the NHS now, people don't even get time to have a toilet break often, or have lunch, it's nothing like a normal office job. You don't get breaks to 'text and chill' like I know I do.

Not sure what you do but perhaps for you and me, a bad day in the office is that the company loses 500K. A bad day for him, or him getting distracted or making a mistake, means somebody dies.

If you choose to be a doctor out of interest and passion, this is your primary focus in life. Your career is your life. He'd probably still do it if it was a minimum wage job. It's just a different mentality. He probably feels like he's making a difference for people and that's his purpose on this planet, much like emergency services, secret service, scientists, high ranking lawyers...

That's never really going to change, that's his real passion and purpose. It's not a job to him that pays bills.

You're lucky that he's amazing when he's at home.

You've had long enough wth him now to know that he isn't really going to change if he was always like that. So you know that if you stay, it will be like that.

He could retire/ reduce his hours, but he probably doesn't want to. Most doctors I know work full-time in their 70s because they love it.

One way to cope would be to build more of a life without him, hobbies, passions etc - it saves you from noticing his absence quite so much.

Before any big decisions.....get married.

You will be utterly shafted if you leave him before then.

Yes that is mercenary, but frankly you need to be as mercenary about your finances and your home as he is about his career.

And if he wont then that is all you need to know......

I'm actually really heartned by the view here that a doctor would likely be able to use their phone to text quickly or to do it on in their break or in the time where they're not so busy.

The press had me believing that doctors are run off their feet, no time to eat or have a wee etc. It's actually very cheering to hear that that's not true!

The position that you are in sounds unusual as most professionals do need their phones on them during the working day, including doctors,
A lot of unimportant ( non work related) texts can wait until the end of the day to be responded to but he could send a quick text to his wife if she wants to have an estimated time that he will be arriving home

You are being ridiculous. Enjoy Disneyland with your husband and child tomorrow…. Princess

I am not a Dr.

I have a job where my phone is inaccessible until my break, if I get it. If I get a break, then there would be an up to 4.5 hour wait for a text response depending on when I was sent the text. If I didn't get a break (due to safety or safeguarding usually), it'd be my full shift. I definitely also don't have time in my work day to talk about anything non work related to anyone (potential break excepted), let alone to someone not in my workplace. Some more senior people do, I'll grant - but they manage my timetabling in 5 minutes chunks and don't allocate 'chat about shite' time for me... Some days I don't have time eat or wee. I can be contacted by the main reception in an emergency, as the receptionist will hunt me down for life or limb situations.

The idea of it being ridiculous that someone couldn't respond to a text in a timely fashion at work boggles my mind.

OP, it does sound lonely. It's worth talking to him. Explain how you're feeling without blame and ask him to consider if he could be home more to help. It may be it's completely impossible, but it may be habit and that some days he could be back faster. I have been guilty of that at times in roles where you are always leaving unfinished work. If he's a good parent and involved when he is there, I feel that overall you'd be worse off splitting, even if you did expect your friends to tell you to do so.

I'm wondering if this is about his job or the money he earns. I was married to a high earner who prioritised his job and hobby over me and his child. He even used the majority of his annual leave to pursue his hobby. He was emotionally and physically absent from our life but put on a good show around other people.

When we split up I got an incredible amount of backlash and nd was seen as the bad guy. It seems if you have a good lifestyle you cannot justify walking away from a marriage, especially if those judging you struggle for money.