I live in Connecticut and my husband lives in Toronto. It’s been this way since we met almost 4 years ago–we’ve only been married two months. I’m moving to Buffalo early in the year and once I get permanent residency in Canada we will actually get to live together. We will probably hate living together.
Yeah, my husband had the same job as you for about 10 years, and that was his schedule. It wasn’t always easy, but it’s definitely doable.
Can you expound on why you would file for divorce in this situation? What do you think the proper alternative would be for him/them? Seems like 5 hours is way too long to commute every day, and maybe there was some good reason that they didn’t want to move closer to the office?
My best friend’s parents only see each other every couple of months, and not just because her dad has a good job. Her mom is a psychotic bitch and won’t divorce him, so he lives away from her to keep his sanity.
I have close friends who are married, and a member of the couple was recently deported to Eastern Europe for a period of two years. They have made arrangements whereby the husband will be able to take a leave of absence and spend six months there with her twice during this time period. Still, the situation is heartbreaking, and I have no idea how they’re surviving it, but they are. Not happily, but they’re making do.
It’s not uncommon for married Thai couples who are both civil servants to live far apart and see each other only once a month or so, if they’re lucky. I don’t know how hard they try to place the couples together, but I guess they can’t accommodate everyone.
My parents were apart for part of the end of their engagement and several months into the beginning of their marriage (several of those months were while my mom was knocked up with me. They didn’t expect her to get pregnant for several months, but instead got pregnant with me one visiting weekend). My dad was apparently devastated and drove to see her every weekend, once forgetting his wallet in the rush and handing a gas station owner his expensive SLR camera in exchange for letting him have a tank of gas he’d pay on his return trip. My mom was much more nonchalant about the whole thing.
I have some very, very good friends who have been together for almost 35 years and their 25th through 35th year was spent in two separate residences.
She wanted a quiet, peaceful and secluded house in the winery-bedecked hills of Sonoma. He wanted the posh, penthouse, artistic lifestyle that San Francisco had to offer.
They maintained both households and he went to Sonoma on weekends. They maintained this for almost a dozen years until the recession two years ago and he gave up the penthouse apartment.
I can only hope to have a relationship like these people have some day.
That’s the usual status for people in my line of work (I’m in consulting): right now my team includes a half-dozen locals (who are doing cartwheels at being able to go home every night), four people who do weekly commute and three who go home for extended weekends or holidays - I’m the only one who doesn’t have an SO. I know people in other lines of work who also do the weekly or long-term commute; some of them have both households and both jobs far enough that it would be impossible to commute daily, some prefer a weekly commute to spending 2-4 hours on the road every day.
It’s not so different from being married to a sailor, truck driver or herder, three occupations which did, and do, take that spouse out of the house for long periods.
Based on my experience in India, it’s pretty ordinary for Indian couples to live apart for work reasons. Several of my coworkers lived in different parts of the country from their spouses, and when I expressed sympathy for their situations, they brushed it off. More recently, one of my best friends, who is Indian, returned to India for work, leaving her husband behind in the US. Many of my American friends have quietly wondered if they’re having marital problems, but as far as I know, they are not - she couldn’t find anyone who would sponsor a work visa for her, and she got sick of not working, so she went back to India.
I have worked with lots of IT contractors who do this. They have to go where the work is. While they are working on one contract they are looking for the next one.
My parents have lived separately many times during their relationship since my father is an army officer. The longest stretch was near 4 years.
Sorta along the lines of the academic career, but I had a professor who would commute from Chicago to Champaign IL which is about a 2-3 hour drive, depending on where in Chicago you’re going. His wife was a doctor and her job was in Chicago. So he taught Tuesday-Thursday classes only and had a house in Champaign where he stayed for the middle of the week. It actually didn’t seem like a bad arrangement, he was only away a few nights a week and really classes are only in session for part of the year anyhow, breaks and summers he could be wherever. He said there were a bunch of professors at Illinois who did the same thing.
Just in the US there are many tens of thousands of airline pilots & flight attendants who spend 3 or 4 nights a week in hotels someplace then return home for a couple days then do it again. Not quite the same as the consultant gig but pretty close. This is also their entire working life, not just a phase before they move into management & gain a static location.
I did it for 15 years. It works. It doesn’t work if your spouse is clingy, wimpy, or stupid-jealous.
Chap I play tennis with has done this for the last couple of years.
He’s now given up and taken a lower-paying job nearer home. The trigger was when his 4 y/old daughter started asking on Sunday night, “daddy, are you going home tomorrow?” - up to that point he’d assumed that “home” was where his wife and kid were, but obviously from his daughter’s point-of-view this wasn’t the case.
But I’ve also met a family in Georgia (nr. Russia, rather than US state) who have relatives working abroad they’ve not seen for years; flights are expensive, and so are visas, so once you’re in the UK or Germany they don’t want to risk leaving in case they can’t get back in.
Makes me feel exceptionalyl lucky to live within 5 miles of my office.
My husband and I have probably lived together less than half of our entire marriage of 15 years. Right now we are in year six of full-time living apart, since our younger son was three. Up till then it was three to nine months here and there.
It is so common here in Japan, it has a name - Tanshin funin. I always swore that we would never do it, but the trouble came with our elder son who could not cope with moves up and down the country every one to three years. Halfway through second grade the teachers told us it was as if he had never been to school at all, and he was devastated each time he lost all his friends. It would take him nearly a year to settle each time, just in time to be uprooted again.
It was also almost impossible for me to make friends (or again, just as I did, I lost them all again) and very hard for me to work. My husband’s parents were getting older and we wanted to be near them in a house that we chose and set up rather than having to rush a move when a crisis hit, so we made the decision to buy a house and live separately.
In many ways it is very hard. I have all the day to day child rearing and school stuff, taxes and health stuff etc all in a language I barely read and I have to do it all myself. He is often not even at the end of a phone to consult, due to the nature of his job. To my credit, I have learned the language well and I cope well. To his detriment - he says when he comes home he feels like a tooth trying to make its way into an already crowded mouth. There is no doubt that I am the boss and I run the household the way that suits me best. I don’t like it when he comes in and wants to change things about. I have to make an effort to let him in!
It has been really great for the kids though. They don’t miss him as since they were little it has been the norm, but they are thrilled when he comes home. Apart from the not so present Dad, they are very settled in their schools, have long-term friends, and have a rich and special relationship with their grandparents. I have friends now, the house and garden is my joy, and my business is now running smoothly. It all works excellently till I get ill then it all falls apart utterly. But I don’t get sick that often!
I think that my relationship with my husband has suffered in some ways - we are reluctant to fight when we are together so some niggles get pushed away and things have blown up in the past. Of course our sex life suffers… But then it’s so nice when he comes home! As I said above, he can feel marginalised but we discuss this and I constantly try to not push him out or act too bossy. He also appreciates that I do keep the home fires burning, and he expresses his thanks regularly which is nice.
Would I have married him if I’d known that my life would turn out like this? I’m not sure. But it would have broken my heart to have split up with him, so on balance I’m glad I didn’t know!
I interpreted the OP a little differently, as in simply living in seperate houses, not “long distance” relationships. I could definitely live seperately but I wouldn’t want either of us to have to travel a long distance to be together. Like, maybe if we lived on the same block or something. Don’t Tim Burton and Helena Bonham Carter live in seperate residences? I want that.
Our very own swampbear and his Ol’ You Know Who (usually abreviated OYKW) have this arrangement you describe, WOOKINPANUB. I know other posters have mentioned similar arrangements.
I prefer this type of a setup. I enjoy having my own space & doing my own thing even if I’m in a relationship. I find it keeps thing fresh, & sexually helps keep the passion alive. I enjoy missing the person, anticipating seeing them again & so forth. The intensity is heightened I guess. I’ve been married & lived w/people & found it kinda stultifying over time, & caused me to lose interest sexually.
But, I’ll be the first to admit that to some I may seem like a commitment-phobic wack job, & everyone’s different. Could well be I just never found that person who I’d want to live with long term.
Certainly wouldn’t want to involve kids or burden a spouse in this type of thing if it could be avoided.
In academia, this situation is so common it has a name: “The Two Body Problem”.
Its hard enough to find one tenure-track position, let alone 2 that are at the same institution or at different institutions relatively close together.