How does having no time off together affect your relationship?

[Babyblues052]

The title may not make much sense but basically I'm on maternity and child care here is extortionate. To put our ds in daycare/nursery would cost 800 to 1000 pound per month so most of one of our wages.

I have the greater earning potential so me and do have been talking about me going back to work full time doing 9 till 5 week days while dp stays at home looking after d's and then dp working part time 32 hours at the weekend doing long days st his work.

But this would mean we would have no days off together and only week day evenings and of course annual leave ect.

I'm worried this will affect our relationship. Does anyone else have the same arrangement? Does it work or do you drift apart?

I have known people live in different countries and also live away or do shift swapping, my DH travelled a lot when DS was a baby and was totally out of contact at the time. Think in a bloody Malaysian jungle.

I think it depends on how resilient each of you are as individuals, what your communication skills are like and how driven you are economically. DH being away a lot was a pain but it progressed his career. That's the other point this working arrangement how long do you see it lasting for? We ended up with five years of him being away a lot. First two were hard as he was away five months of each roughly.

I think this kind of arrangement can work for some couples but would be too hard for others.

See that's the thing I have no idea how we would cope with it. I suppose it's not as bad as some people. It's just we have always had at least one day off together and are able to do things. It's the unknown I suppose.

It's really important to me we are able to do things as a family ect. Which I suppose we will when one of us takes annual leave.

It would only be for a year or two so we could definitely do it. Just don't want to feel like we are living separate life's like passing ships in the night if that makes sense?.

I think it would be doable but how about a compromise with one day at nursery and you work 4 days and both have , say Friday as your day together. ? Would your work let you do that ?

I couldn't do it personally. My DH was in a job for a few years where he was working 5 days in the office then frantically working at home on weekends; it was toxic to the point he changed jobs to make sure he actually saw me.

Could you do one day a week daycare so you get, say, Sunday together?

PN girl has a better idea if you can find weekend child care . Round where we are it hasn't been invented yet

If you made specific time for each other then it could work, cringy term but 'date night'.

It means we've happily been together for almost 20 years! It works for some, not for others, we've always been this was so know no different!

Ah, no I meant for example OP works Mon-Fri and does childcare Saturday, DP works a long Saturday and a long Friday. Child goes to nursery on the Friday as both of them work.

PNgirl hadnt even thought about that! Ill speak to dp when he gets in from work. Seems like a good compromise.

I think you're right it seems it either works for the couple or doesn't, we will have to try it to see if it works for us or not.

Thanks for your replies!

Personally, no, I couldn't do it. My dh and I had to be long distance for 2.5 years early in our relationship after we'd been dating for about a year. Like I was an 11 hour flight away on the other side of the world, due to professional commitments made before we even met that we each had and immigration issues that meant he couldn't come with me. It was manageable, but only because we knew we had no other choice and importantly, we didn't have children. We missed each other and longed for a normal relationship again, but it wasn't compounded by the daily stresses of running a household and raising small children.

Personally, I think quality of life is really important and your relationship and family life has to be protected even when finances have to take a hit, unless it's for a very short period and you see the end in sight. When our dd was small though, I worked part-time while dh worked full-time (he runs his own business) and then ocassionally one of us would do a weekend day. So our dd was in nursery 2-3 days a week (the days I worked) and then home usually with me the other days, though occasionally my dh, and then sometimes one of us would do a weekend if we needed to, but it wasn't every week. I think if you can cut some expenses and do a couple nursery days during the week or even one of you works weekday evenings, that would make it more manageable. Weekends are precious to me and I think they are more important than weeknights when kids are usually in bed anyway. I would want to protect those days as much as I could.

We have this atm. DH works Monday to Friday. I only have Sundays off, but more importantly I work evenings so the only time I see him is the evening of one day off in the week I have and Sundays. This doesn't work for us. It's not for much longer, hopefully. Talking to a colleague she said she and her DH bicker much more when they don't see much of each other. I definitely feel more snappy now than when I saw him more. We'll be all right, but I really don't like it