anyone work away from home AND have a dp that also works away?

[hatwoman]

for various reasons I'm contemplating a job that would take me away from home 2 days/one night a week. Problem is dh's job is the same. It's all still a HUGE IF but, we could be looking at a week that would have dh leaving early on a monday, returning late on Tuesday. me leaving early on Wed, returning late on Thursday. when we're at home we'd be working from home and/or looking after the (school-age) kids. we could possibly arrange things so neither of us worked on Fridays. or at least had time for lunch and/or a dog walk together. Does anyone else do anything similar and has it worked ok? I'm worried dh will hate it. he did once say he'd miss me if I worked away too much...

just thinking about it, that's only 2 nights a week in separate beds. that's not TOO bad, is it??

sneaky evening bump

Could be chaotic and stressful. Or could give you both some pleasant time to focus on work without having to think about getting the kids to school etc!!

I would say the success or not would very much depends on your family set up. Must say my first thought in this situation would be for the children. Also depends how well your DH parents when you are not there. If he needs to be constantly told to do X or Y, then it will probably be stressful.

I would prioritise time with the children (after school)over time with DH at home on a school day but obviously everyone is different.

My DH works abroad fairly frequently but his is very unplanned, Blackberry message = I'm off in two days. I also go away from time to time but in a more organised way. This is not too bad now but was a real pain when DS was small as DH was v unreliable and would book meetings when he should have been coming home early etc.

Think it's a bit strange that your DH would try to stop you going away if he does.

DH and I have an even more chaotic life and it works. sort of. We have had a couple of weeks where both of us planned to be away on the same night by mistake, but we have always managed to reschedule.

It will only work if you have a back-up.
Things will come up that will require you to be away at a different time from normal and one or both of you will be put in a difficult position with work.

DH and I manage - I am normally away 8 nights a month, plus some long days, and DH will be away maybe only 4 nights a month, but more v early starts/late backs. No back up.

We both manage our own diaries though, so don't have too much trouble co-ordinating

We live in the country. DP works in London in the week and I workla there two days a week, which means four nights away from home for him and one for me.

Works well at the moment. My parents have our little girl for the two days/one night I am away and we get a night together in London to stay in/go out/fall asleep at eight o'clock.

It's worked just fine for us, but I think that you do need to have flexible childcare and some sort of a back up as we have come across various complications such as shut motorways, poorly babies and late meetings.

Also, we make a point of having lots of family time at the weekends,so we don't feel we miss out on being together as a group.

I'm on my own and I go away on business sometimes - Iran, Dubai, Switzerland this year. It is manageable although I prefer to be home. It just takes organisation.

I would have thought if your other half is away 2 nights a week it is particularly important you aer too for all kinds of reasons of fairness. Paritcularly if he's saying he hopes you aren't which is just about the worst sexist you can imagine - perfectly find for him to be away 2 nights because he has a penis but not for the little wife. Why not you work away and prohibit him from doing it because you want him around!

thanks all. I may have given the wrong impression re what dh said. and he is absolutely not sexist. in actual fact he's quite a trail blazer in his v. male oriented industry. Several years ago he negotiated a 4-day a week contract so he could spend more time at home. it's virtually unheard of for men in his line of work to do this (he was featured in a newspaper article about dads who work part-time). he then resigned to go freelance and now works 1-2 days a week. he is currently negotiating a new permanent contract for 2-3 days a week, which will give him loads of time at home but a more secure income. he does more parenting than me, is better at it, enjoys it more and prioritises it way over work. if he could he would give up work completely but unfortunately we can't afford that.

when I said he did once say he'd miss me if I worked away too much, what I should have said really is "if we both worked away too much".

however, I will admit, that there is a sense in which gender politics does, unfortunately, creep into the scenario - in that his work is extremely well paid and mine is not. (both similarly qualified, but he went for maximum pay for least effort, I went for a vocation) so, as we plan our life, there is an assumption we can't (financially) get round - that he will work and that some of that will be in London. that's our starting point, if you see what I mean - hence I said "if I work away", because currently he does and I don't. it's not sexism at a personal level, but perhaps has somthing to do with gender at a societal level.

the conversation where dh said he'd miss me if I worked away "too much" was also about a different scenario to that in my op - one where I worked away more than him - 3-4 days a week.

the other complication in working out what's "fair" is that I would be doing something I love and am committed to, whilst earning very little - in effect taking less than my fair share of family (ie childcare and financial) responsibility. if the roles were reversed and a dad wanted to pursue his dreams in this way I know what the mn response would be.

I realise much this info wasn't in my op - which was much more about logistics. Iadd it now because some of you read stuff that wasn;t there - esp xenia postulating that dh thinks he has a little wife, and ladylapsang thinking dh was trying to stop me. I've never had anything but the best support from dh. including when I travelled to a war zone when dd2 was 9 months and dd1 2y9m. and including when I took a year's sabbatical during which I worked 4 days a week and earned zero.

actuall, I take back the bit about him being better at parenting than me. no need to get carried away in defence of a good man

Okay, yes I see but of course it still makes me seethe that yet again we have a woman picking lower paid work and man not. Why is taht? Why time after time women have a vocation to earn a pittance and men don't and earn much more? Why isn't it even more likely the other way around? It engrains the sexism time and time again and colours lots of aspects of relationships. Do the women pick the vocations because they know they can live off male earnings for life or do their mothers say do not sully your pretty little teenage head with thoughts of hard cash - just think about the pretty wedding dress and being a nurse or artist - leave real men to be surgeons or lead BP?

I would have thought that the really critical issue arising from the situation described in the OP was childcare and, to a slightly lesser extent, domestic work: who will do these when both the OP and her DH are away simultaneously, or back to back and are tired from all the travel?

Never, ever underestimate how much domestic work piles up when you travel for work and aren't around to keep on top of it!

True but if you rean more you can buy it in. I can leave a house with 3 student children ni it and there's someone here whom we pay for a few hours each morning and occasionally a child can tidy up too and I get back and it's not too bad although if there are elements only I do ( like the rubbish bins) I have to think about that if I'm away.

I don't think the OP has student-aged children, I think she has smalll children who can neither be left alone nor expected to run a home.

It's a real issue, IMO - what happens on the night that you are both travelling and there is a critical school parents evening?

I'm on my own and last year I missed a school parents' evening. They actually are never criti al and they are as dull as ditchwater and mostly completely pointless and could be done by email in 2 secs which is what teachers do if you cannot make it. I have hardly ever missed one as the children like you to be there but it doesn't really matter if you do. When I missed the one (or two because they're twins last year) I just fixed another day to go up. Life is full of compromises. If women always put themselves and their careers second to everything they tend to get pretty fed up over 20 years and that rarely benefits their children. If they go so very very into having the perfect child and live out their life and dreams through the child because they've not had much of a career so being a parent becomes their job in a sense they tend to put too much pressure on the child. I rather like it that I can never remember the children's teachers' names etc but I doubt most parents share my stance but then I've had over 20 years of going up to schools being keen so may be it's just worn off over so many children. I listened to a tape I made 23 years ago when my second child was born today, a long time ago.

xenia - your post of 8.10 raises some v interesting questions that I often ponder (unsuprisingly, given my situation). at a personal level I can say that I chose my line of work firstly because, at a very young age, I had an overwhelming sense of being privileged and lucky and I felt I had a moral obligation to use my good fortune (by which I mean nothing more than being born in the west and being moderately intelligent) to good use. secondly, I have never been very materialistic - on a (very) minor scale I had a riches-to-rags childhood and it taught me a lot. I always knew that I could "get by" and that even in my relatively badly paid chosen line of work I would have a roof over my head, clothes and food and be able to educate my children. that was adequate for me and un-imaginable luxury by some people's standards. Third - I kicked against a school and background that was desperate for me to become a highly-paid professional. The final thing is perhaps more interesting - as a youngster I measured wealth only in materialistic terms - by which I mean I never imagined that earning power could have an impact on the intricacies and dynamics of a relationship. In that respect I was, I guess, naive. However I was fortunate to marry a man who does not consider that his greater earning power merit more say. possibly because we were both young and, materially, poor when we married. However it's something I can't help but feel, sometimes acutely. and believe me, I have often often wished we earned the same.

your questions, while interesting, are only one side of the coin. for me the bigger question is not why do many women choose lower paid careers, rather, it is why are the careers that many women chose, lower paid.

Anna - in actual fact childcare and household jobs are unlikely to be a big issue. we're lucky in that between us we would be working about a total of 6-7 days a week (me 4, dh 2-3) - much of it from home. This is about what we currently do - without childcare apart from after school club once a week. The only difference (if, and it's a huge if) I got this job, and took it, is that I'd be away 2 days a week, instead of hiding in my study.

hatwoman I know a number of people where one partner is away Mon-Thurs (not the same as you but more nights apart) and they find it works well.

In fact one said to me that when her DH was there in the week he got in the way of her routine .

If you are never, ever going to be away simultaneously, I'm not sure what the issue is. I've never lived any kind of life where I expected to spend every night of the year at home/with my partner and I cannot really conceive of a different sort of life.

I don't agree, however, that it doesn't matter if you are both away simultaneously on a regular basis. I see lots of families getting into problems when this happens.

So as hatw says why do women pick lower paid careers. I can understand how hw could choose a career X which may not pay as well as another mgiht but she ended up wtih a man who earnedc more. Why didn't he (and more to tha point where do so so very many more men than women) choose the higher paid option. Don't mean have the altruism or do women knwo inside they can always live off male earnings and marry well or are we saying men are more materialistic than women so woudl become the leading surgeon or care home chain owner rather than the care home cleaner. Huge coincidence that it's so often women picking these low paid jobs which they sometimes regret later. It has big implications for power in a relationship later surely if X earns much more than Y. Y has to stay pretty, give good sex and keep the house clean or she'll be out on her ear, she must worship at his superior feet because he earns so much and she is worth nothing in capitalist terms.. unelss her currecny is her good looks and she keeps them and dresses well I suppose. But of course we're assuming here women choose to live with men rather than their lesbian lover I suppose and also that women choose to live with a partner which plenty don't in which case it becomes irrelevant.

(Mmm, most adultery is caused by opportunity though and it's not too bad a plan to spend most nights together.)

What kind of "relationship" requires couples to spend every night together to prevent adultery? Not one worth having, IMO!

I thought studies showed that most people dont' particularyl plan to stray but they are away with the army or a flight crew or away filming on set as an actor or on a business trip or at a conference or they park their family in the country and live in a small flat in London in the week and then it is much more likely to happen. If you spend every night together or most which is how most couples are then it is much less likely. But you're right some people would never stray and others will even if they're home every night too.

Going on my own observations, it seems to me that those couples who are glued together and have no lives of their own are the ones who end up having flings and affairs in order to relieve the tedium!

Too much togetherness makes couple and family life very dull. We all need friends and interests beyond those we pursue with our families and partners to keep us alive and progressing as individuals.

hatwoman - I haven't read the whole thread (I got bored somewhere around the point where Xenia was advocating that you should do it on a principle of 'fairness' ) - but pre-DC DH and I both travelled all the time - but not as predictably as you describe. We would sometimes literally only see each other in Heathrow. My travelling job had to go when I had DS as it was just not sustainable (and DH was earning a lot more). Now we both travel occasionally, and sometimes manage to schedule even that at the same time and have to fall back on my parents for childcare.

However, if a scenario such as you describe came up, and it was the right thing to do from a career/job satisfaction/income perspective, then we would definitely do it and not worry about it.