Those of you married to a lawyer

[Ancientruins]

Does it ever get better?

He's a lovely man and he earns a good salary but I'm twenty or so years in and the work never stops. I mean never.
Not on holiday. Not during births. Not during house moves.

And although a devoted husband and father who totally gets stuck in when available, that tends to be only two half days at weekends if we are lucky. And then he is so exhausted he either forces himself to join in, falls asleep while we are watching a film, or he looks so wretched I send him to bed to catch up on sleep.

Things are much better when we are on holiday; he becomes so much happier and more relaxed although business calls still creep in here and there. And of course it takes him ten days on either side to fight through the work and then catch up again to even get to the point where he can leave the office for a few days.

It used to work well because I very much like my own company and I have a close and supportive family, but as time goes on, I am starting to wonder what's the point, why do you even need a wife, do you just expect me to sit here and wait until you are available in fifteen years when you are retired? Isn't the point to enjoy the journey along the way? When I ask him this he says "but the reason I am doing this is for you and the DC". What am I supposed to say to that?

It sounds selfish because I know he loves me and relies on me being "around" but I am getting a bit tired of being at the bottom of the priority list which appears to be: work, DC (quite rightly), dog, household necessities, life admin, wife. Except by the time he gets time to focus on me he is so tired his eyes literally glaze over when we speak. I try not to take it personally.

I'm thoroughly fed of him constantly being on his phone, or conversations, meals , evenings being interrupted by calls from clients. When we were first married it was a joke that as soon as we started a conversation , he would rush out of the door to the office, to the airport, to a client meeting. Our teens actually named him "the smoke" because that's all that's left in his trail. The joke is starting to wear a bit thin!

People assume there are monetary compensations but I am lucky enough to have my own source of income so I am not dependent on him for that.

He says he can only do his job now at this level because of all the hours and the expertise he has built up over thirty years. And I know his work is in an important field which he finds incredibly challenging, and intellectually satisfying. But it doesn't leave time for anything else, and as the years go on, there doesn't seem to be any hope that things will change before he retires, if he doesn't drop dead of a heart attack or stroke first.

I miss him

I don't agree this is normal. Yes many lawyers work long hours and don't take proper holidays but not taking time off during a birth etc. He is choosing to work that way.

My exH was also a partner in a City law firm working long hours. However, after 20+ years of marriage I found out that at least some of those hours were being spent shagging work colleagues on the side and conducting a couple of long-term affairs. The long hours culture makes a perfect alibi for this so I would not necessarily assume all his time out of the house is really being spent racking up billable hours.

When I asked exH why he said that he had the wife and the family and felt he was entitled to a bit on the side as well - because he was so special ya know.

@MsTSwift

It’s kind of annoying that only men can get away with being like this. Can’t see a woman being able to work at this rate and have a husband and children too

I know some women who do it but they are all child free. It's clearly harder for women to dump all the parenting on their partner so women just don't seem to work like this once they have kids. That's not to say they can't be successful - they just seem better at imposing boundaries, probably because they have to be.

Yes several of the partners at the City firm I was at were doing this. Only the ones that were total knobs to be fair.

Once an elderly secretary phoned the senior partners wife to tell her about his latest affair with a temp. That was dramatic! He was the same man who declared that “x is a real loser still with his first wife” 🙄

I think COVID has made things much worse due to the lack of boundaries between work and home.

One thing I have found useful in getting my husband to switch off is to have holidays in places with no internet and no mobile signal. You can actually book holiday cottages which advertise this as a feature.

It’s kind of annoying that only men can get away with being like this. Can’t see a woman being able to work at this rate and have a husband and children too

Strange isn't it that they balance their job with family, but I guess perhaps their partners arent as willing to pick up the slack.

@MsTSwift

It’s kind of annoying that only men can get away with being like this. Can’t see a woman being able to work at this rate and have a husband and children too

I have a female colleague/friend who's like this, working in a university law department. I've come to the conclusion over the years that she is a workaholic. Universities will exploit their staff mercilessly, and a lot of people do need to work excessive overtime for fear (rightly or wrongly) of being sacked, but most will slacken off when they can. And yes, she has a husband, and children, and elderly parents etc.

I keep telling her that if she wants to work this hard she should go somewhere that pays a heck of a lot more than a university, but it falls on deaf ears.

I was a City partner - it is hard work and the work life balance isn't great but there are ways to carve out time. Is your DH actually a partner because if he is it ought to be possible to carve time out as you have the seniority to delegate. If he isn't a partner it should also be possible as the client has the partner to call if he isn't available. When you are on holiday you set your OOO and voicemail to say so and depute the most senior member of your team to be the "go to". 9 times out of 10 they can handle it and are usually up for partner soon so want to prove themselves anyway). The 1th time they call you to ask what they need to do and get back to client. If you want to eat with your family you put your phone on divert to VM. After all if he was on another call/commuting on the tube or in a meeting with another client he wouldn't be answering his phone/emails. He just needs to treat you as if you are another client for the time that you want him to spend with you. It's all doable but he needs to be sufficiently organised to do it. But if he is a partner I would definitely start asking about when his sabbatical is due.

I am a city lawyer married to a city lawyer (though by the sounds of it much more junior than your DP). Up until recently the long hours haven’t been too bad because we were both doing them - now I’m on maternity leave and getting a taste of what it would be like if only one of us worked those hours (my DH worked three of the four days I was in labour). It is incredibly lonely!

I see why people are saying it is a choice - of course it is, he could get another job or, if he’s senior enough, restructure things a bit. But when you’re in the midst of it, it really REALLY doesn’t feel like a choice. It feels like your clients, many of whom become friends, need you for something incredibly important to them and you are terrified of letting them down. None of this is a good reason for neglecting you and DC (I’m already panicking about how to make our careers work with a child) but it’s easier to explain to you that he won’t be around than to explain it to a client - because you love him and will forgive him whereas a client will take their business elsewhere. An individual time of doing that makes sense and then before you know it it’s been years of putting clients first.

Law is also such a conveyor belt - it’s so way to say “I’ve just got to get through my training contract/qualify/make senior associate/make partner/make senior partner and then it’ll be better” but it never is. One of the people I trained with described it as a pie eating contest where the prize is more pie.

None of this is an answer and if you’re really miserable he needs to snap out of it and quit or formally take a reduced role but it’s so hard to do when you’ve invested so much.

I just hope I manage to step back before it ruins my marriage or relationship with my DD. I absolutely love my job but family is more important.

My husband must be something of an anomaly then as, despite being a senior partner in a City law firm, our evenings, weekends and holidays are entirely for our family. We have four young children and I have a demanding, professional role too so anything else just wouldn't be fair on them. He does have a very capable team so perhaps that helps to make it possible. I think you definitely need to have that talk. x

I find this baffling. I am a senior lawyer, pretty high flying, surrounded by other high flyers. None of us have ever worked like this, beyond very occasionally (once or twice a year). I put my child to bed every night, I eat dinner with my spouse whenever I want. I work late sometimes and weekends sometimes but it is not the norm. I always see these threads and think, no, this is not about the job, this is about the individual (99% of the time, male).

I’m a lawyer and I don’t work like that. He is choosing to do so!

Not married to a lawyer, but a banker (who finds out next week if he's getting a promotion to the MD level, incidentally) he used to be in consulting when we were first married and it was AWFUL. He even took a work call after our wedding reception. I have a whole collection of photos of him working on holiday and in beautiful hotels/restaurants/landmarks around the world. We were once on a romantic weekend in Paris and he got up at 1am to join a conference call.

He's got a lot better, but he definitely has workaholic tendencies, and I do have to have the occasional "come to Jesus" moment to keep him on track. I've absolutely had to intervene to stop him working all day at the weekends and explain that 7am - 3pm absolutely counts as all day . I feel like he changed a lot once DS came along though - he's much better at stopping work for family time and being present.

I suppose what I'm saying this generally isn't just fixed by one big conversation, but rather, ongoing small ones, but that things can absolutely get better.

Oh and I think one of the tuning point was an absolute flaming row after we spent $800 each on a tasting menu at a beautiful restaurant in Napa, and he kept leaving the table to take work calls so I basically did the whole thing alone while he ran in and out shoveling food into his mouth.

I absolutely lost my shit at him and was SCREAMING at him in the car park. I don't recommend it, don't let it get to snapping point.

A sad kind of post, OP.

Don’t know why exactly.

He sounds like a decent man with interests and so forth.

It’s the new phrase “Come to Jesus” talk, it seems, but I like it! Perhaps a good place to start.

Throwing oneself into a vocation, or workaholism etc can be to do with sacrifice (priests, writers, mothers) but there is usually some aspect that gives back. Where or what is that with you or your DH?

Get some time tomorrow night. Netflix.
Watch Daniel Sloss’ ‘Jigsaw’ - together.
It put things into perspective.

It basically boils down to one word NEGLECT.

I think it's definetely a type, the only advantage you have over other negleted women is money. I've known workaholics who actually loose money through their work, like it's their hobby, throwing money into it to keep it going.

You have children, you have a few choices... Accept he won't change, get on with your life and realise no life event will be special enough for him to be available. Ever.

Be as ambitous as him and try not to let it bother you, the children in this case will be neglected.

Leave him and accept that whatever promises he makes , he will break.

Oh and try not to get ill as they do find this an inconvienience.

It's a hard lonely life being married to an workaholic, they say it's for you, you think it's for you, but it's not it's for themselves.

You are believing the lies.
You are not a team, you are there for the crap ride.

I used to be married to a man like this. Not a lawyer, but a city banker. And a workaholic.

He did actually do as he said he would and retired. At 49. We went on a couple of holidays that first summer. And I realised that his neglect of me wasn’t because he was too busy working to think about me, it was because he found it incredibly hard to think about anything outside his comfort zone. And his comfort zone was his work, that he was incredibly good at. It wasn’t emotional relationships.

We lasted another few months, and a few sessions of counselling, where it became clear that he thought there was nothing wrong with him or his attitude and he had no intention of the retired version of him being anything different from the workaholic version of him as far as connecting with me.

I spent 21 years with him - the first 7 were great, because we were both equally obsessed with our careers and wanted little from each other but sex and fun. Then we had kids and I needed me and them to be more important than his obsession with his career. And it took me 14 years to realise that was intentional rather than circumstantial.

I wish I’d realised it earlier and not wasted so much of my life waiting for his empty promises to come to fruition. But then by the time I did realise we did at least have enough money for me to have an incredibly comfortable life as a divorced woman

@Bluntness100

I think this is very typical of the legal profession, my daughter is a trainee and she tries to maintain a balance but she’s often on line at ten pm. It’s the nature of the beast. I know many of the senior associates are working well into the wee small hours regularly. Unless you stay junior in a high street firm then I think this is really what you’re signing up for. Sorry op.

Perhaps for trainees and associates but further up, this just isn’t true. As others have pointed out, there are other options including moving in-house. I used to work with an in-house lawyer who’d rock up each day at 10 and leave at 3 (granted, an extreme example, but none of the lawyers worked long hours).

It's partly choice OP.

My ex isn't a lawyer but has a high-flying impressive demanding hours job, though annoyingly not amazing pay. And he thrives off it, the being wanted, the being on-call, the constant interest from people around us who think his job is fascinating. I was happy to give up my work for the baby/toddler/younger years. But less so in recent times. And it caused conflict. The other thing that got me, was his lack of interest in any complaints or needs I had. He just defended it, saying all jobs were like his, what did I want? he asked. And I should be grateful when he did get time off(!)

Had he been interested, had he looked at how he thrived off it, had he really listened to me. Had he really examined the thrills he got from from interupting every conversation to answer his phone. Then he may not be an ex. But he didn't. And it's SO liberating. He still interupts conversations about childcare now, but now who cares.

Law in private practice is v stressful..there are never enough hours if you cannot say no to clients in terms of managing expectation. Very few of my clients understood that their file/case is not far more urgent than the next client. And I was v good at my job...the money paid for private school education & college tuition for kids. I brought work home when necessary & did it after dinner, bath, bedtime routine. It was difficult to juggle but I did it. Once youngest finished college, I did my finances to see what I needed to earn, upped it a bit to cover some extras & then moved from private practice to in-house. Much less stress & less money too but no sleepless nights worrying about statute limitations, contract deadlines, managing demanding clients (which can be v v difficult when they give alot of business/fees). It can be like a merry-go-round that it so hard to jump off. Have a money conversation, do the sums...tell him you want him on this earth with less money in the bank than six feet under in an early grave. Tell him you support him cutting back on salary etc. I know alot of wives (sorry ladies) who tell me at work dinners/drinks all about their husbands working day & night...but there is no way they want to give up the big house all interior designed, private club memberships, 5 *hotels & designer clothes or the SUV gas guzzler for the 5/10 min drive on city streets. Keeping up with the Joneses becomes a sport to some...scary some of what I've seen & heard... I feel so sorry for some of my male colleagues...def headed for a stroke/heart attack. If he could accept that he can earn less & everything will still keep turning & you are fully behind him & supportive...maybe he might see the light. I'm not saying you haven't OP...but sometimes the figures have to be on the table...

My EH was a workaholic. It is a very lonely life. When you prepare a meal for someone and they look into the distance/at the clock behind you whilst eating it and are just not present in the conversation as they are thinking about how quickly they can get back to work. How any time not working is only about them relaxing because they are such a VIP. And yes you always get told its all for you when you don't want any of it. Id rather have lived on half the money but had him look at me and not through me. It was
Clear to me it was not the job itself but how
He chose to do it and manage his
Stress.

I was so lonely i couldn't take it any more.

Your thread and comments are sad OP. This is your one shot at life and it seems like you’re just waiting for him. For a retirement that may or may not come.

My DP is a tradesman and probably earns a fraction of what your husband does, but I get time with him some evenings and weekends. I wouldn’t swap that for more money. I’m content with my own company but need that connection too. You must be so lonely, and you deserve someone who cherishes their time with you too. Not just on holiday, but throughout the daily grind of life.

You are important and deserve to have your needs met. You’re missing out on the most basic, fundamental parts of a partnership.

@MsTSwift

It’s kind of annoying that only men can get away with being like this. Can’t see a woman being able to work at this rate and have a husband and children too

I know several women with husbands and children who work like this. I've been one in the past myself.

My dp and I are at the Bar and work ridiculous hours. We carve out time away (pre Covid) some of the time that’s messed up by court diaries going tits up.

‘Luckily’ self-employment and both being established and senior means we consciously reduced work a bit around 5 years ago to ‘save’ family and personal life. Started to book out prep days and be happier to say no to long cases which would threaten booked holidays etc.

Plenty of women at the Bar have similar struggles where family has lost out at times. It’s more accepted for men, still, fundamentally. Less accepted for men to reduce hours seen as lack of ambition or some other nonsense.

It’s so much more difficult when an employed lawyer or establishing yourself or financially insecure and needing to work all hours. It’s really brutal. Too many do indeed die younger than ‘expected’ - the work takes a toll. Child protection and crime bring added stress and can change people fundamentally.
Good luck op. You’ve taken big step in setting it all out for yourself and being at a point where you need to do something to get him back a bit.