To feel a bit hurt that Dh didn't come home from work on my birthday until 10.00pm?

[YellowPrimula]

I know I am a grown up in fact I am middle aged with three almost adult dc and I also know he has a very full on job ( never home before 8.00pm on a good day) . He would just say it's his job , I don't understand his job( I do I've lived it for thirty years and work in a not completely unrelated field myself), he literally can't leave , others work even longer hours, can't let clients down etc etc .Can you tell we have had these arguments before ?

I want to be cool and laid back about it , after all it's just a birthday ,but I feel so hurt .He was away all last weekend,which involved a day off, admittedly a rare occurrence and I didn't mind at all but it feels like he can leave if he really wants to.I 'm not wanting bells and whistles just home in time to have dinner as a family , maybe a present that doesn't come in the post because he can't find an hour to go shopping ( it was a voucher from somewhere only 10 mins from home ) but he couldn't even find the time to pick it up so it came addressed to me in a brown envelope! Apparently that was from the DC as well but as it wan't signed or in a card even how would I know ?

[JessieMcJessie]

"I won't stop him working like this and it's a done deal"

He would just say it's his job , I don't understand his job( I do I've lived it for thirty years and work in a not completely unrelated field myself)

Both these comments struck me as a real shame, in that he seems unwilling to enage with you about the minutiae of what is causing him to be so absent from family life, and is in fact quite dismissive of your input, when you do understand his job and could be a helpful sounding board. Is it perhaps a matter of pride, that he does not want you to think he struggles with any aspect of his job?

As I said before, lawyers are often not very good managers. This is often due to not having had any exposure to how other organisations manage their affairs and staff and being thrust from fee earning into management with no training and in circumstances of extreme pressure to churn out the work.

My DH has worked in various corporates and consultancies and used to give me great advice about looking at things differently when I was a Partner (I am now in a different role, due to an international move, but we do still discuss my job). However it only worked because I was willing to share lots of detail with him and I would not react badly to him challenging my views of how I had been conditioned to think things should be done. So if I said "I'm stuck in the office" then of course his response at the time was "poor you" or "never mind I'll eat by myself his evening" but when we had a free moment he would press me a bit more on how I had found myself in that position and how I could stop it happening next time. I did not get defensive about it. Sometimes his advice was not helpful but sometimes I was able to make real changes by heeding it. Equally I give him my input on problems he faces in his job. We don't have these discussions because it was causing problems in our marriage, but because we each find the other's job interesting and know that it's our mutual responsibility to make sure that our jobs don't have a negative effect on our life together.

God that sounds a bit smug but I hope you see that it should not be acceptable to be dismissed by him with "oh you don't understand" or to give up thinking your opinon should matter to him.

[Zaphodsotherhead]

If your chldren are near adult, then I'd guess he must be thinking of retiring sometime soon? Does he have any plans for retirement, ie, what the hell it's going to be like having no work to do?

[YellowPrimula]

Actually Jessie we do all that , it's just if we are arguing about him putting work first that the comment gets thrown at me which is why it's ridiculous!

[JessieMcJessie]

Glad to hear it . Not the bit about the ridiculous comment of course, but that you do talk in that way. Hopefully you can be honest with him about how hurt you feel on this occasion.

[harshbuttrue1980]

There is always a trade-off. As a wife of a city lawyer, I'm sure you live in a lovely house, have expensive cars, clothes, holidays, a cleaner, nanny etc. In order to get that sort of standard of living, law firms expect their lawyers to give their whole lives over to the job. If that isn't working for both of you, then maybe he could go into a different branch of law or go part time. Would you both be happy to take the cut in standard of living that this would bring though??

[Osirus]

My DP is a lawyer too. He's rarely home before 8pm. During the recent stamp duty changes, he was working 7 days a week and not coming home until 1-2am.

The problem is high client expectation. They are more demanding than they ever used to be.

[Dozer]

So he left you in hospital with a poorly newborn to go to work, and then again when you had.

If he didn't prioritise you and his DC then it's not really surprising he doesn't turn up for things like birthdays.

[YellowPrimula]

Harshbuttrue , we do have a nice life but it's not that luxurious , he is not magic circle , although v well respected firm .We have a OK house , but not huge ,and I have four hours cleaning a week ,but I also work 3 days sometimes more more in a fairly senior job myself.I drive a boring Golf and we have a holiday abroad every year , always self catering .There is no way he would ever work part time , he would hate it , we have talked recently about me giving up work but to be honest whilst two of the DC are still in education I feel I need to work to give us that financial cushion.