For many years, my husband traveled Monday through Thursday every week. In one role, it was more like 2 week stretches on the road with him home for a couple days in between. For the entirety of our relationship, to see each other for any stretch of time meant vacation time and pre-planning. We kept our love alive through lots of texting and video-chatting. Things definitely got harder when we had our son, but we made it work.
When we started dating in 2016, we knew his job would have him traveling, that it would be challenging as our family grew, but that ultimately it was worth it for what he wanted in a career and what we wanted for our lives. The sacrifices we didn’t envision (or didn’t want to envision) – eating dinner alone every night, him missing so many precious moments with our son, not being able to join mid-week game nights with friends, and the list goes on – weighed on us especially hard as 2019 drew to a close and 2020 began. We were growing tired of the separated feeling our weeks had. We had a lot of discussions regarding if what we were doing was right and what it might look like if he came off the road. Little did we know what 2020 really had in store…
Today, my husband has been home for nearly seven months. It’s the longest time we have ever been together consecutively in our entire relationship (before this, it was our honeymoon for a 10 day cruise and then two months from his paternity leave last summer). While the world is insane, I can confidently say I’ve enjoyed nearly every minute since he’s been home (yes, I did say “nearly”….we are human after all. We get on each other’s nerves sometimes). We spent the first couple months of him home spending basically every second together because we didn’t know how long it would last. Then we realized this wasn’t ending anytime soon, and we probably needed to develop some joint routines and do things normal couples do like go grocery shopping alone, go workout alone, or really just do anything solo.
We were overly excited to have this extended time together. But in this time, we also learned a lot about each other, for better and for worse. It was almost like we were newlyweds again, just moved in together and observing the other for those weird and funny habits you never noticed before. Five years into our relationship, and we still find those oddities. Neither of us had been living secret lives, but we had each established Monday through Thursday routines and habits that needed to change now that we were no longer separate during those times.
I thought having my husband off the road would make things easier – and it certainly has in many, many regards – but in reality, it has produced many unforeseen challenges. I now spend most of my days chasing our toddling son down the hallway as he tries to beat me to the office where my husband is diligently working 12+ hours a day. I know our son hears his dad’s voice, and all he wants is to be with his dad. I am grateful for the couple minute breaks my husband finds throughout his day to refill his coffee or grab a snack that gives our son a few moments of a dad hug or a short book with daddy or a quick run in the backyard chasing the dogs all together. The breaks just never seem long enough, but they’re more time than we’ve ever gotten with him during the workday before.
Having my husband home also means feeding a man who is training for a triathlon which feels like a full time job in and of itself! Creating workout schedules that don’t conflict, finding time for my husband to be with our son while he’s awake that doesn’t interfere with my husband’s work schedule, and managing to get (some) housework done is a big shift from what I had grown accustomed to while my husband was traveling.
This truly has been a “the grass isn’t always greener” lesson while also being a “the grass is WAY greener” lesson. I spent most of my son’s life being a married woman that often felt like a single parent. I loved the time I had with my son, but I was so sad my husband was missing so much. I was lonely and frustrated much of the time, and I dreamed of the day my husband would switch jobs and just be home. I longed for him to leave at 8 am and return at 5 pm, and I wished we could just be a normal family. Despite the challenges of discovering what it’s like to be a “normal” couple, I would choose sleeping in the same bed as my husband every night over him being on the road all the time any day. When faced with a challenge (like 2020 has been for so, so many people), we took a step back and took stock of our lives. I have the opportunity to feed my husband nutritious food every night rather than him eating alone at a restaurant with marginally healthy food for the umpteenth time. He has gotten to see our son go from just barely crawling to running and starting to say his first words, things we never dreamed my husband would be present for (our son took his first steps straight into my husband’s arms. It was beautiful.). We get to invest in our relationship as a couple and face life hand-in-hand rather than through a screen between work dinners, bedtime routines, happy hours, and cleaning the house. We’re steeling ourselves for when his company decides to have him start traveling again, but for the time being, we’re just going to enjoy this blessing and take it in as long as we’re able. We like this green, green grass.
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This grass is way way greener.
Your words bring me to tears each week.
Life balances… Oh the joys of figuring those out! ❤️❤️❤️