To be angry my husband sleeps at his mums 3-5 nights at a time when he’s working?

[ladyrushford]

Ok. I feel like I am being unreasonable but I guess I want an outside perspective too.

DH has been recently promoted at work (copper). I am very proud of him. It’s meant that our family life has had to change as he’s doing a combination of early shifts (7 am start), late (3pm start) and a set of nights every four weeks. He tends to work six days, three or four off.

We live in outside of London, where he works, and the trains don’t always run early enough for him to get to work in time so when he started I made the suggestion of him using his parents house in SE London as his emergency base, in case of cancelled trains etc. But since he’s started he’s actually spending long stretches there - not a night or two, but three or four days on the trot. May half he was there all week as he worked nights.

We have 3 kids, our eldest is disabled and attends specialist school. I was able to get transport over Easter so I wasn’t running three kids to three separate locations on my own (DH used to work from home three days a week in his old role). I also work full time but I work from home. I don’t have any network - I live far away from relatives, no siblings, and I’ve not made many friends around here since we moved 2 years ago. In short, when he’s not at home I have absolutely no back up, respite etc. It’s relentless.

So tonight I got annoyed when he announced he was going to stay at his parents for another four days because otherwise to get to work he’d have to be up at 4.30am to drive to a station to get his trains. The kids got upset so he’s staying but he’s furious with me and gone to bed without a word to anyone, reminding me that he has to be up in ‘a few hours.’

I feel terrible now. Why is this so hard for me? I’m trying to be supportive honestly but I just feel so alone and it’s making me irritable. So.., how I can STOP being unreasonable about this??

Of course you were having a bad day!! I wouldn’t cope with this. You need to sit him down and say I get you are prioritising sleep. But you are not realising how hard carrying the family while I support your work is. If we keep going on as we are then I will fall over in a heap, and you will have to take carers leave until I recover, which is often weeks when overworked women just can’t keep going anymore. I need more support - I need you to suck up the commute more often, less nights at your parents, I suggested that to help you and you are taking the piss by moving in there for half the week, and when you’re home you will need to do some things like batch cook to support me during the week. If you can’t manage those then prepare your explanation for why you need two weeks emergency leave to look after your kids, and both of our careers will struggle.

that seems wholly reasonable to me.

Absolutely this. He could get up early and drive but he doesn’t want to because his set up suits him. No thought for his wife and children.

Agree with this 100%.

I have a couple of friends who have husbands who work away regularly - one has a husband who works away M-F every week (they have 2 kids) and one whose husband travels for weeks and weeks at a time, many times a year.

The first one dropped to 60% working (as a teacher so out of the house) as she just couldn't make it work for pickup and dropoff every single day and keep working full time. But she did do it for years first - her kids are 9/5 now. The second one took early retirement as her husband sold his company and did really well with it. Their kids are 12/5 so she also had years and years of somewhat single parenting for the majority of the time. But none of these children have additional needs (and there are only 2!) so that's a whole extra challenge.

I think basically this isn't going to work for you and you will break. Appreciate that your son has a specific school requirement but could you move slightly nearer your husband's work? Somewhere in the middle so it's not so brutal on everyone? Can you use the promotion money to drop your own hours or pay for parking twice a week or something? Can he park at his parents, get to work, go back for the car and drive home or is that just as bad?