I have a co-worker who just recently revealed that he doesn’t actually live with his wife and stepson full time.
Edit: He’s worked for this company for about 3 years, and has no intention of leaving.
His house is actually about 180 miles away, and he lives in a local apartment during the week and commutes back to his house on weekends. He’s got a 8y/o stepson.
This first struck me as a strange relationship, but the more I dwelled on it, the more I realized that, “hey, it works for them”.
I couldn’t do it, but I know for a fact that I’m am freaking awful at doing the long distance relationship thing. Absence does not make the heart grow fonder, in my case, as my husband and I get along fabulously together and we argue a lot when we’re apart, probably because we’re both irritated by it. We do fine without any real “alone in the house” time, and spend all of our free time together, but separate us and we don’t get along as well.
It would be severely taxing to my marriage to try to live apart.
A former co-worker had the same arrangement. Her husband got an excellent job more than 100 miles away – a city manager job, which required that he live in that town. She didn’t want to give up her good job so they’ve lived apart (except for weekends) for several years. They’ve been married a long time and their kids are grown, so their “burdens” in that regard are equal.
It’s an unusual situation, but in this economy, a lot of situations are unusual. It’s not that different from military families who face long separations.
I’d consider it a tragedy. I’d expect one or both of us to be actively seeking employment in the other’s city.
But then, our VP spends the week here in town, a 2.5 hour drive from his wife. They’ve had three children since I’ve worked there, too. If I was her I’d have filed for divorce. And not had the kids.
For a while my brother in law was living in an apartment about 250 miles from home. He came home once every three weeks. My sister’s commute is a couple of hours in the opposite direction, and she has an excellent job that pays great and that she’s had for decades. They were planning on moving to where BIL was staying, but would do it in stages so that one daughter could start school in the new town while the other finished school in the old one. It almost tore them apart as a family.
Thankfully BIL’s old boss was found out to be the jerk that he is, and BIL’s commute is once again a five minute walk.
About fifteen years ago my best friend’s wife got a great job in another city, and he didn’t want to move there until he found a job (he’d been unemployed for about a year once and did not want to go through that again). His wife and kids moved to the new city and he lived with us for about six months until he found a job there as well.
I am a traveling consultant and this is very similar to what everyone in my field does. We work 4 days a week onsite, living in hotels. Depending on how far away from home the project is, we fly out on Sunday, and home on Thursday evening. If we’re lucky and the project is close enough, we can fly out on Monday morning. I’ve been doing this for more than 15 years.
My SO and I did this for several months, after he had gotten a new job, and I stayed behind to sell the house. We weren’t happy about it, but it was necessary to take advantage of the great job offer he had gotten.
When I look at some couples and how busy their evenings are, between working late, things like church activities or clubs, and running around with the kids, I’m not sure they actually spend any time together on week nights any way.
During the depression my great grandfather could not find work in his field anywhere but in Philadelphia. The rest of his family stayed in NY. He eventually returned. I wondered how it was cheaper for him to support two households, but realized he didn’t maintain a household there, he lived in a rooming house, and if he’d uprooted his whole family they’d have had less of a support system.
For the last two years of my parents’ marriage we lived in PA and my father worked in NY. He came home about once every eight weeks or so. I think this actually allowed the marriage to continue longer than it would have if they lived together full time. Things were not all honeysuckle and catfish before that situation arose.
I’ve known a lot of marriages like this in academia. The husband, a Ph.D. in, we’ll say- Business- gets a good tenure track field in his area at a university in Illinois while the wife, a Ph.D. in botany, gets a great opportunity in South Carolina and they see each other when they can (holidays, summers, Skype, etc.).
Some librarians I’ve known, both male and female, were professors or Ph.D. track students who took librarian jobs because they’re (in a better economy) easier to find within driving distance of a spouse who’s a tenured professor and they don’t want “academic separation”.
I knew a family when I was in high school that had a different arrangement. My friends parents were married, had a child, but lived three miles away from each other and went out on dates three nights a week.
The explanation my friend gave me was that they loved each other but after being married for about 10 years decided that they couldn’t handle living together and preferred to just date, so that’s what they did.
I don’t know if there was anything extramarital going on also or not, but I knew this family for 4 years or so and what my friend told me seems to have been exactly what they were doing.
My wife and I criss crossed the globe living in different cities, and sometimes landing in the same one for awhile for the first five years. We’ve now lived together for the last six and are finished moving seperately (unless for short predetermined times). All in all, it was sometimes hard and sometimes fun.
My mother travels the world full-time speaking and giving workshops. She is away from home at least 60% of the nights of the year and even then, my stepfather is a college professor and works 70 miles from home so he isn’t always around either. They lived two states apart for two years after they got their doctorates late in life and needed to get their careers on track fast but they had been married for several years living together before that. I honestly don’t know how good their marriage is but any problems would they have are probably helped by that situation based on who they are and what makes them happy. They aren’t typical 60 year olds and don’t plan on sitting in a rocking chair on the porch ever. They go on vacations together and travel travel to see family together most of the time.
That type of arrangement is pretty common in the academic world. I have known some academic couples that have tenured professor positions on opposite U.S. coasts and it is semi-permanent arrangement. They just travel to be together when they can. I thought it was odd until I questioned why people felt forced into being in a 50’s style marriage for no other reason other than the fact that it was what people did in the old days. It makes sense to me if it does work for them. I don’t think I could ever be married again but I might be persuaded if I didn’t have to live with the lady or see her all that often in person.
A couple I know did this for years because he couldn’t find work locally and she didn’t want to move to the city. They had two kids together before they ended up living together full time, and even now his work is seasonal and takes him away for weeks or months at a time with only weekend visits home.
My parents have been doing this for the past few years. Dad works in California and commutes home to Washington for the weekend. They both get lonely but Dad hasn’t been able to find a new job at home yet.
I do this. My husband’s company closed their local offices and told everyone involved that they could report to the company flagship in Nebraska by such-and-such a date, or look for work elsewhere. This was five years ago. We decided I would not move with him - I have very elderly parents living in this area and we had a child in a top-rated school district that we were very happy with.
Another consideration was that he works for a very large, very stable, very old and established major company in its industry. The benefits package was, and remains, extremely good.
So yeah, he’s home on weekends. We’ve made it work. You do what you have to. And it has turned out to be a good decision - many of his former coworkers who stayed and got local jobs lost them when the recession hit. The company he stayed with had no layoffs and is now being noticed for the way it maintained stability during the downturn. He’s got an excellent retirement package and he’s within 5-10 years of being eligible to use it. The plan is he stays there with his apartment until retirement and then come back here. I am not considering moving up there with him for any reason and he agrees with this. What I do as a nurse here is a bit specialized and there’s no opportunities for it there. This is home; Nebraska is just a detour.
My hubby works out of town. I live in WV and manage our rental properties here, he works in Baltimore, MD, for the federal gov’t. There are a lot of fed jobs here in WV, and he’s trying to transfer to one of them, but in the meantime, yeah, he’s only home on weekends. We communicate daily by email and phone, and every weekend, we are careful to have ‘couple time’ as well as ‘family time’ (we have a 10YO daughter). It certainly has its challenges. But I try to look on the bright side: when he’s not here, I get all the pillows!
My parents spent 12 years spending the summers apart; my father’s job is largely seasonal, so he’d be at work 6 days a week from April to October and drive the 2 hours back down on his day off. Thing is, from October to April he can work from home and is always there. It’s an adjustment to have him back during that time, then another adjustment when the season ramps up.
He’s at a new place, much closer now so he comes home every night, but it’s still kind of the same thing; really busy half the year, dead the rest. Mom likes to joke that the secret to their marriage is she only has to see him six months out of the year!
I think I’d have trouble with it; I struggle enough when he’s on a business trip (as he is now), I can’t imagine having to manage the home myself all of the time!
