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 think he’ll feel we have enough until we have 8 figures in the bank...

But then he will want 9

But when I confront him with the hours he works and ask if it is really necessary; he has what appear to be serious, reasonable and credible (as far as I know but I don't know a lot) answers as to why it is.

And if you say 'I am unhappy now, and lonely. I don't think I can stick it for much longer, feeling completely incidental to your life.' - would he have a good answer to that, too?

I was married to a Lawyer for 20 years. He was a partner in a big law firm having worked his way up over the years. I spent the majority of our marriage on my own at home with the children.
We had an affluent lifestyle, children in private school, big house, nice cars but I didn’t have a present husband.

He missed every single concert and parents evening, I once had to sit in A&E with my newborn breastfeeding and trying to placate a toddler with a broken arm on my own as he was too busy to leave the office.

I begged him to send time with us, told him I was desperately unhappy and I was envious of other couples who spent time together. He had no time for anything but his job. I even moved countries away from family and friends because he promised the work life balance would be different, it wasn’t. The final straw was when he promised our son he would come to a concert at his school and he didn’t turn up, seeing my sons face did it for me and I left him shortly after. Some people are just programmed to work above all else. I’m so much happier now with my current partner, it’s like a whole new world I could have only dreamed about.

My heart really goes out to you.

I hope this next bit doesn't sound harsh, but it really wasn't something I understood, fundamentally, until this happened.

After losing two men in our family in quick succession far too young from heart attacks (almost certainly from work-related stress), I finally grasped that none of us have any idea how much time we have left.

You don't know if either of you have seven years left. Don't make plans on that premise.

Also, he has said he will change time and again. His actions have not changed. Believing that he will change in seven years is totally unfounded.

As we say here on MN, if someone shows you who they are, believe them.

@lookout198991 your comment resonated so much from my own personal experiences, reading it was honestly like therapy! Thank you!

This thread has been an interesting read. I’m a lawyer in a city firm and at the point where I need to decide whether I want partnership or not. My DH is an academic so earns significantly less than I do and has often complained that I work too hard. I’m on mat leave with my second child and ambivalent about partnership but also sick of seeing average male colleagues make it while talented women drop out. A lot of it is down to who can put the hours in and how their lives are set up to facilitate that. I love my job but also my babies, and can’t imagine sidelining them the way many of the men I work with do. Does that mean I don’t have what it takes to be a partner or do we need more partners with a realistic approach to life?

Anyway, I can only agree with so many posters here who have said that the OP’s DH loves this really. His job is what gives his life meaning and even the difficult parts have their compensations - he can feel like a hero and a martyr and you will always have to dance to his tune.

I think if you can afford for him to step back then you need to ask him to consider it.

Lots of these stories are so sad. I've always wondered whether being married to a partner is as bad as it looks, and it seems that it is. This whole thread just reminds me of .

OP, in terms of trying to constructively engage with him, some possible ideas:

• you say that you have money of your own, but is that enough to support your whole family lifestyle as it is now? Sounds like he feels a lot of pressure to earn a ton of money. Would echo the suggestion above of sitting down and working out your outgoings and how much you really need coming in.

• being a lawyer (especially being a partner) can be a huge part of someone's identity, mainly because it's generally considered to be very prestigious and people are impressed by it. He may be worried that people will think less of him if he's not a partner anymore, or even that he won't know who he is without work. Kudos to the guy who got his HGV license mentioned upthread, that is brilliant.

• the risk of making himself ill by working those hours is real. Stress can kill you, it's not just a turn of phrase. When someone upthread mentioned a guy in his 60s doing 2,500 billable my mouth actually dropped open. That's crazy hours for someone of that age.

Good luck, OP. I really hope something shifts for him (and you).

I'm not married to a lawyer but am C Level in a law firm.

This thread resonates with me so much. My DC are now grown, but I have so many regrets about how much I missed of their growing up years. Looking back, I have always been very ambitious, and found that I 'had to work' all the hours god sent, despite my family needs. So many missed family holidays, cancelled plans, lost opportunities. It quickly became apparent that raising DC and managing life could not be done with both of us missing, so DH gave up his career and started a (never very successful) business WFH. That saved us, to be honest. We would never have survived as a family, or as a couple, with the hours I was missing in action. I travelled for many years, sometimes for several weeks at a time, but always at least 5 or 6 days a week, and was home only long enough to eat and sleep. There was a always a crisis that needed me to fix. Sadly, the crisis in our lives had to be handled by DH. Thankfully, he is long suffering and very supportive, but I can see how much it meant he lost out.

10 years ago I decided enough was enough. I got a job locally, so no more travel - sleeping in my own bed is still a joy. I set about creating a firm where life and work CAN be balanced. It was not easy, but we are finally at a place where our lawyers, male and female, do not value themselves or others by how many hours their bums are in chairs, but instead by success of the firm and their clients. One thing that has helped has been that all of the founding partners have now retired. The ones who said 'well, I didn't get any paid leave off to have my DC' etc. The ones raised on the idea you had to suffer to gain the rewards of partnership. Switching that attitude has been intentional and difficult, but it is now firmly entrenched into the culture of the firm.

Today I am calling all of the associates to ask if they would like to consider moving to part time, either permanently or temporarily. They need to be reminded at least annually that this is an option for them. Especially during the pandemic, any real flexibility has been critical and well received.

For me, I am now able to work 50 or so hour weeks and really enjoy my down time. I plan to go down to 30 hours next year. That will be telling!

OP - your DH can do this, in the right firm with the right support. if he's not there, and wants to make the change, he needs to switch companies.

I'm not married to a lawyer but am C Level in a law firm

What is C level?

Lookout198991

I couldn’t agree more with everything you’ve said, I’m also an ex City lawyer. It is a choice. It’s easy to think/feel you’re stuck. But there are options for improving your life balances.

OP. My Dad was a workaholic. So much of what you’ve said sounds like my own mum. She looked forward to his retirement for decades. He finally retired (delayed, and then delayed again for years), but he couldn’t adjust to a life without his very senior, high profile job. His job WAS his life. Without his work he has suffered with awful depression. Please help your DH to make better choices whilst he still can, you deserve better and so do your DC. Good luck

@ElderMillennial C level means Chief (of something or other). I run the firm, so hire and fire and make all of the business decisions. Steer the ship. So I know I am 'like them' and know myself, and them, having only worked in law firms my whole career. Not for the faint of heart.

@stealthbanana

Well yes *@PersonaNonGarter*. And if I really wanted to have a 100% support human I would have married a man who wasn’t career focused. Personally I like to spread the risk of earning money so we are in a dual career household and both make compromises on how we work/what kind of work we do. We all make our choices. My point is that the OP knows her husband is like this and is benefiting from it in many ways too. It’s not as simple as just saying well I’m done.

Of course they need to talk but I am not sure it’s realistic to expect the OPs husband to suddenly change the way he’s wired. You might not like that, but it doesn’t make it any less true.

I agree with this point and it's been conveniently glossed over in this thread. And I suspect will still be ignored as it's hard to face the reality that you're the one responsible for the situation you find yourself in.

I've been reading this thread (I'm familiar with the profession) and hours these men are working are insane. However I'm more shocked by how women who are obviously intelligent, went ahead and chose these men to marry and have families with in the first place! Utterly bonkers! These men are working at a level that is not only detrimental to family time but to their own health. Only a small minority of the male population is a workaholic to that extent so it's clear they have issues and have core values focused on money and status. It's common sense that such people are unlikely to be involved dads/husbands.

A woman whose top values always included family and quality time together as a priority, would never have reached marriage stage with such a man. They just wouldn't. It's actually very unfair to turn around at this point and expect him to change a core part of himself you chose or to break up your children's home. Makes sense to try to improve things (and counselling for him and you both as a couple could really help) but at this point there also needs to be a level of understanding and acceptance.

@Suagar when they started going out the women who married these men probably were not that different to the men. The ambition and drive was probably an attraction.

However these men don't value their family time and probably don't see what they are missing out on as that's not their priority. It IS a choice - for example US law firms require you to work a lot more hours than a UK one. So someone wanting the work life balance wouldn't choose to continue in a US firm even though the money is great. Because you can still earn well in a UK firm and have the balance. Just an example

Dh could have been a partner at the magic circle firm we worked at - his appraisals were stellar. But he walked away from it to prioritise family. When our first child was born we left the City and moved to the south west he works at a large regional firm one of his terms for choosing them was reasonable hours and WFH on Fridays. He works hard but nothing like we were working. Rarely evenings. Maybe 3 weekends a year tops.

What was interesting was the reaction of his peers at work when he resigned. Very odd. A mixture of disbelief and a weird envy. But nothing was stopping them doing the same!

Of course change is possible. But whether it’s entirely cultural or driven by fear or desire, my H didn’t want to change. He liked being important, he liked knowing what was really going on when reading the press and he was ambitious so a move in-house wasn’t the answer, for him or for us-he moved but he still worked silly hours.

What happened to us was he had an affair and he left. We had planned to retire but he couldn’t seem to do that (not now, when so and so is bedded in, when this crisis is past etc) and I think so much of who he was was bound up in work that the thought of stopping was scary. As I’ve said upthread, he took the reason I’d stayed, and put up with the rubbish, the no shows at parents evenings and school plays, the head buried in blackberry throughout such events, meals out, holidays..... well you all know the story. I stayed because I was sure it would be alright in the end. Silly me.

It is alright now, 6 years on, and I’m happier living a simpler life which is a good deal more honest. But again as I said upthread, I wish it had turned out ok between us, that we could have been happy without the trauma. I wish fundamentally that he had loved life enough to be present in it for me and the children. But he wasn’t and probably wasn’t ever going to be that person. Had I understood that maybe I’d have had the courage to leave (the point of my posts being, I hope I would have otherwise I’d have wilfully rather than ignorantly wasted years)

How do these uber busy men fit in affairs ......?

I’m not a lawyer, but had a job that was demanding my all. DP works 8am til 9pm daily. I didn’t return to work after my maternity leave and chose to home school my older DD instead. It was the best decision I’ve ever made. DS has me all the time and is flourishing emotionally. My DD was in full time childcare by age 2, and has always been an anxious child (but an easy baby). We were planning renovations at our house, which we cannot afford now without my wage. We won’t be able to have holidays abroad. But we are so happy, content and bonded. It’s made me realise that time with children is so precious and no job is worth losing time with them. DP is working from home, so I am persuading him to come out of his home office periodically during the day.

OP is completely is denial. She keeps repeating what a great/lovely man he is. She's so blinded, possibly by love? that she can't actually see that he isn't. He's a workaholic who doesn't prioritise her, the marriage, or the kids, at all. And deep down she knows this. Really.

I think that some of this is slightly unfair. For those of us in our 40s and older, when we started out the lives of most law firms partners certainly seemed to involve less work than they do now. When I was an associate in the 2000s it was me and the other associates there grinding out the work night after night, the partners were generally nowhere to be seen, they had scarpered at around 6pm (and I am talking about one of the most prestigious firms).

However, over the past 10-15 years the partner role changed - as client demands for 24/7 connectivity and ridiculous turn around times increased and this coincided with the lawyers coming up through the system becoming increasingly savvy and working out fairly early on that they don't want to be like "us"; this, together with the increased pressure on partners to do 1500-2000 billable hours on top of everything else has made life as a partner pretty miserable.

It has taken me a while to realise exactly why I'm miserable and I'm having to rethink various things from a financial perspective but I don't want to spend the next 15-25 years on this hamster wheel.

@chopc yes I agree these women would have shared the same values, which is exactly why it's hypocritical and non-sensical to complain about it now.

Marriage isn't a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship,
it's meant to be a life commitment. It therefore beggars belief that they didn't consider the clear impact these values and workholism would have on long term relationship and family life before choosing to get married to these men. From the men's perspective, they're not doing anything wrong, they're simply exhibiting the values these women chose to marry them for in the first place.

DH has been at the same firm since qualifying and is now a junior partner....top 25 firm but not American or silver circle. He is in a small litigation adjacent specialty and he works 930-530, Monday to Friday and takes all his annual leave. He always has done, bar a few (probably less than 5) all nighters over the years. He never works weekends and so so rarely in the evenings and it’s always a big deal to him, he never just works evenings. He hates working evenings!

So it depends on firm and speciality and where your clients are but more importantly, your personality type and what you are prepared to do. DH has always wanted to prioritise family.

But I guess it’s not really about that, and more about your DH. He sounds like a lovely man who’s got caught up in how he feels he has to work. He probably can’t really cut back in his current role, as he has set out his stall now...... so the question is, can he find another?

@Suagar well to be fair you would imagine people in a marriage would adapt to family life when kids come along.

Work-life balance is the new 'must have' but it's rarely a balance. Something or someone has to give - give mor than the other, that is. And often it's (the sanity of) those of us left to pick up the pieces for the end-client, y'know the one that pays your (not my) fat salary. So, today, I've been trying to meet a 2 pm deadline (imposed by my lawyer-client late yesterday evening through not having done the job they were supposed to do 6 months ago...another story, but not an uncommon one. First, they send me a slew of anonymous, untitled documents as email attachments because, hey they can't be bothered to index them, or use a zip file or a document sharing app. which doesn't take aeons to download from their system or which breaks the internet because the file is just too big, I try to talk someone through this so I can get the documents I actually need instead of the waste of paper I've been sent. The responsible fee earner is permanently WFH (but doesn't take any calls, respond to e-mail, text, whats-app or, in desperation, Facebook- though he's busily posting updates/cat pictures/old holiday photos on there all morning), and the person with whom they job-share is available but won't take the call as it's "too late" to get involved. I need someone to sign off on the 25 pages of documentation I've produced for them/saved their bacon with this morning before the court deadline. Their senior person will deal with it (hurray!) but not until tomorrow because she's 'leaving the office' in 15 minutes (although also WFH) because of child -care commitments. I am fully aware that her youngest DC is 19 years old. Sometimes WLB is just an excuse for not wanting to take responsibility, especially when the WLB- ers are unpoliced.

You made it to legalcheek.👀

@SchrodingersImmigrant

You made it to legalcheek.👀

And roll on Friday.