On being apart from close family, and how people handle it

In My Humble Opinion
1

I probably should have asked this question before I moved away from my wife and kids to take up a job far away from them. We thought that the separation would improve my mental state, which was not good at the time. It has made things worse.

Before I left, I talked to a couple of high school friends who had served in the military and spent a lot of time away from their own wives and kids. They gave me some decent advice, especially on ways of keeping up lines of communication. But recently that’s been breaking down for us. My wife and I almost never fought in the year or so before I moved, now we fight quite often over the phone. We usually patch things up before the end of the call but it’s been distressing.

The bigger problem is that what I’m going through isn’t really like being on a military base, because outside of work I have nobody to talk to. I’m working 60-hour weeks just out of sheer boredom and loneliness…I’d probably be working more if I weren’t sleeping so much out of depression. My wife and I thought that I would be spending a lot of time going out and exploring the new city. Instead I’m just spending most of my time other than being at work and my apartment traveling between the two, and making the occasional foray to get supplies. I’m not going to new restaurants because I don’t like eating alone all the time. And I don’t feel able to go to new places or make new friends because I just feel too damn depressed to get out of the apartment…after working so much even on the weekends I’ve used up all the energy I’ve got. To be honest I can’t think of what I’d want to do for fun anyway.

The sad thing is this isn’t the first time this has happened in my life. I was in another big city soon after the breakup of my first marriage. There, too, I had a hard time having fun or making friends and I spent a lot of 60-hour work weeks and weekends cooped up in my apartment there too. I didn’t realize how enjoyable that city could be until I went back there on vacation some years later, and I realized what I had missed.

So I put this out to those who have been in this situation themselves: how does one break out of this cycle of loneliness leading to overwork, depression, and self-enforced isolation? Considering my earlier mental health issues I fear that if I’m not able to pull out of this spiral things could get bad for me in a hurry.

2

I have been in the situation you describe as the wife staying with the kids and minus the depression of the husband. Is there a light at the end of the tunnel? As in, do you have an end date where you will be together again or is this an open ended separation? Also, why was this move considered a good thing for your depression? These are not accusatory questions, just trying to get a frame of reference.

3

To answer the second question first–there were a lot of bad things going on at my last job, so much so that my psychiatrist was actually encouraging me to either go on indefinite leave or quit entirely to get out of the situation. Plus on top of that the organization decided to hire someone who had sexually harassed my wife at his previous job to be my next boss–and, no, I’m absolutely serious about that, you couldn’t make it up if you tried. (The whole story is in the “Workplace griping” thread in the Pit.) So I had to get out of there fast, and to me moving here was saving myself from a worse fate than staying would have been. I was really concerned that my depression would get worse, but my therapist, my wife, and others tried to put a good face on it and say this would be a chance for me to restart my life, to have a bit of breathing room for a while. The last 18 months of my job were very bad to say the least and they hoped that being in a sane job would help a little. Things are a little better work-wise but right now it’s all I have.

As for whether this situation is going to change–the plan as it stands now is that if things work out for me here, after my stepson graduates from high school in June 2015 my wife will find a job here and my stepdaughter will go to school here. The potential pitfalls are 1. things might not work out for me here, 2. my wife might not find a job here, and 3. my stepdaughter might not want to live here. We’ll figure out number 3 when my wife and kids come to visit and my stepdaughter has a chance to see the new city. It’s too early for my wife to start looking for a job, but she is building her skillsets to help her chances. My wife’s current job is going well, and my stepdaughter is relatively happy where she is, and they could decide to stay where they are until my stepdaughter graduates in June 2018. Then again, if things go down the toilet for me here I could decide to go back and find a job after my first year’s contract is up. So the end of the tunnel could be in 11 months, 14 months, or over 4 years.

4
  1. Therapy
  2. Look up fun stuff happening in your area and go alone or ask a coworker who seems nice. Force yourself to get out. If you can’t do this, goto 1.
5

This sounds like a very untenable situation for you. You have very little authority in decision making when it comes to living arrangements aside from making your job work. You are unhappy, but the decisions are up to the children in this arrangement. I can’t see this as anything other than demoralizing for you given that your hands are tied.

6

Well, you’ve GOT to get out and do something. Make yourself. I recommend, personally, doing something kind of structured - not just going out to a bar or something but taking a class or volunteering. So you don’t have to force yourself to talk to people, you’ll have an activity about which you’ll pretty much have to converse, even if it’s just “so what exactly were we supposed to use to get all this gum off the sidewalks?”

7

Medication (if you aren’t already on any). Often a temporary solution to temporary problems.
Taking a book or a newspaper to a local bar or wine shop. You don’t have to actually drink. But you’ll easily make friends, and it’s low impact, low energy.
Tell us what city. Maybe someone here’ll have more specific advice.
Time. How long has it been? If it’s been less than six months, then just hang in there. That’s part of moving and starting a new job. Perfectly normal, although sucky.

Hang in there!

8

Find a place to volunteer in the evenings and weekends. It’s not work, but you stay busy and you get to meet new people. If things come up at work, you can always cut back on the volunteer hours.

9

I was rooting for you in the Pit thread and delighted that you were able to leave your awful former company. I’m still rooting for you! One thing not to underestimate is that having coped with that difficult situation for so long will have left its mark on you. You need to be patient with yourself as you recover from the abuse you went through. Time heals all wounds and all that.

Especially since it looks like you’re falling into an old pattern here, I think you need to take concrete steps to pull yourself into a healthier place. First, set yourself a firm limit of how long you work each day, barring dire emergencies, and then stick to that limit. Don’t let yourself get exhausted through overextended workdays.

Next, find something positive to fill your free hours, which will have the pleasant side effect of giving you a reason to leave work at a reasonable time every day. I like the idea of volunteering, because it will give you a boost and create connections with other people and with your new city. Do you like animals? Maybe you could help out at a local shelter and walk the dogs or just play with the animals? Taking a class sounds like it could help, too. Do the museums offer guided tours through the exhibits? Is there a day spa nearby where you could get a weekly massage to help you relax, stimulate endorphins, and fill your need for human touch?

I would suggest that you aim to get some structure into your new life, so that your default isn’t to spend all waking hours working.

Be good to yourself! You’ve gone through a major transition and that takes time to process. Ooo! I just thought of something that my aunt told me when I had moved far away from my last home and felt isolated. She said that I should always have a plan in the future to pull me forward. So I started planning out my next vacation, and it really did help. Think about planning a trip with your family so that you have something to look forward to.

Good luck!

10

When I’m on travel and eating alone, for dinner I usually go somewhere with a bar, and eat at the bar rather than at a table. That has much less of a feeling of being alone. Plus it will get you out of your apartment for a while.

11

FWIW, it sounds like your wife is being incredibly supportive. I’m sure the situation is hard on her too. Take comfort in the fact that you have a loving and supportie network of people who care for you.

Did you ever post what city you’re in? People might point you to things in your area.

12

There’s a lot to talk about. I’ll try to reach all of the important points.

Meds and therapy: I still have a stock of meds from when I left, and I’m still taking them. I have about a two-month supply. I will be looking for a new therapist, but I am being hung up (and so much around here seems to work like this) by a minor technicality. Even though I am paying for my health insurance through work, the insurance company demanded a $50 “pre-coverage fee” before they would issue me with an insurance card or start insuring me. This little bit of red tape is still sticking even though I sent the fee in some time ago. If it clears, I’m going to start looking.

Something structured to do: I am signing up for a creative writing class, which I’ve wanted to do for some time, this summer–I was just a bit too late for this semester. I was going to sign up for a sports team, but my knees are just shot–I cannot even run on a treadmill any more. I’m not sure I can take time off to get surgery at this point (more on that in a minute). There is a writers’ group…it’s some distance away, but I intend to go at the first opportunity.

I like the idea of volunteering, especially with animals. I miss my cats a lot. I see a lot of stray cats around (they’re everywhere! Even the apartment complex has two of them), which suggests to me there must be some cat-friendly animal shelters about. I’ll go looking.

Work: I’m not sure it’s going to get better before it gets worse. My boss is griping about “people leaving right at 5” and suggesting to me that my workers leave at 5:30, which means me leaving at 6 to “look good”…which wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t get to work at 7:30 or earlier. I work in data analysis, and our database is horribly overburdened. If I don’t come in early, I don’t get to extract data–well, I can after everyone else gets in, if I want reports to last for hours (I had to abandon one today when I found it would take over five hours to run). My boss knows this but does not care, and so I am going to be doing 10-hour days–plus various nights and weekends–for as long as he’s there. It’s not easy to be going 60-plus hours a week, especially when you’re the only one in the office doing it. And so I’m kind of in a vicious cycle again–too tired to do much when I can get home, then feeling more depressed about being alone and just having the energy to get in another 10-hour day. I’m going to have to break this through volunteering or going to the writers’ group, but, honestly, I’m probably going to have to designate one of the weekend days to sleep through. (Then I’ll have to work during the other one.)

I think the next steps for me are trying to get the last pieces of furniture for my apartment. Then later my wife and kids are going to visit, so that will be nice, and I can look for things to do together with them. I will have to work while they are here, but maybe it is better for them to explore the city a bit on their own to see what they think of it. After that I don’t know. I think the idea of planning something is a good one.

The city I have moved to is Miami. I’ve lived in big sprawling places before. I don’t speak Spanish, so I’m trying to learn–especially as many of my co-workers do. Miami is actually an easy city to find one’s way around. It is an intimidating place to some extent. People seem obsessed about what neighborhood you live in. I don’t think in ten years at my last job I figured out where everybody lived, nor did anybody particularly care. And I know this is a sweeping generalization, but so far most people I’ve met have been outwardly friendly but under the surface not always helpful or nice. That could be my workplace though. I’ve run into some good-natured people elsewhere.

And lastly, my wife is supportive. She does have something of a network of people back home, although her job is getting pretty stressful. We are still talking everyday. The kids have stepped up too with laundry and dishes and errands. I think they’re all hoping this doesn’t last long.

13

FWIW I am south of Miami in Key Largo- if you find yourself with a day to enjoy and it’s nice out, drop me a PM and I can get you set up with a nice kayak/paddle board for the day and you can go out and look for manatee, dolphin, etc. We always have something going on down here, lots of festivals, events and places you can meet new people. Drop me a message and I’ll shoot you some info.

Zette

14

I know a friend of mine who is in Special Forces (and away a TON) have a rule that when he phones home, they can’t argue. Phone time is loving time (sounds corny, but it’s true). Arguments/Disagreements are hashed out over email.

It seems to work for them

15

That’s a bad spot to be in. That cycle of depression and isolation can become a nasty feedback loop. I can’t offer much in the way of advice but wish you best of luck.

16

My job has taken me away from my wife a lot. A couple of things I try to keep in mind: don’t freak out over one bad conversation, just because one call didn’t turn out well, don’t think it’s the end of the world; cut each other some slack; and it’s always harder for the one who stays behind. Think about it from your wife’s perspective, she’d probably love some time in a hotel on her own to unwind, read a book, or go to a museum. Cut her as much slack as you can, when I was in Baghdad, my wife was worried sick, working a full time job and taking care of everything, I was in a new place having new experiences and the time flew by for me and dragged for her.

17

BoBettie, I could go to Key Largo if I was allowed to occasionally raise a glass and say “Here’s looking at you, kid” like Bogey…I can’t see that on the map without thinking of that movie.

I think the “no arguments over the phone” is a good one. For some reason we miss hearing things over the phone, and it leads to a lot of misunderstandings. I don’t think it helps that we’re both in jobs that have a lot of what I’d call “artificial” stress. It’s not like either of us are in Special Forces, but we both have superiors who sometimes act as if we are, who make things a lot more difficult and convoluted than they have to be.

I’m going to be out of loop and away from here for a while (not that I have been here a lot anyway, I know). A lot of things are coming up. I hope to be back in a week.

18

Well shout when you’re back online and take a drive to the Keys, it will for sure clear your head

19

It’s been a bad week. Has it been a week? It might be longer, I can’t remember. Anyway, things are kind of getting bad.

My wife and kids were here last week, and the visit went good and bad. It was great to see my wife again, but we argued again, which hurt both of us a lot. My wife was very upset with herself for spending so many of our last days before I left arguing with me or ignoring me. I felt the same way. I knew it would be hard to see her go, and it has been, incredibly so. We spent so much of the time she was here just holding each other not wanting to let go. The kids were completely insufferable. My son especially, who’d wanted to come to Miami so often, instead spent the entire time bitching about everything in sight, wanting to drag all of us to places nobody else wanted to go to (mainly high-end clothing or electronics stores where he knew he couldn’t afford anything), constantly mocking his mom and sister for every perceived flaw, and basically acting like a huge spoiled brat. His sister was a little better but spent most of her time sulking that she didn’t get to spend 24/7 at the beach, even during the rain I guess. Eventually I had to tell my wife, look, I had to put up with this when I lived back there, but I am not prepared to put up with it when I am working a 60-hour week (which included a major meeting I had to lead with the big boss in attendance, while the wife and kids were at my apartment) in a city I have no friends in and barely know. Of course the moment they got back home they told my wife they wanted to go back as soon as possible. I told them they were not coming back until they grew up. I haven’t spoken to them since because I am the biggest meanie in the world, I suppose.

Meanwhile my bipolar disorder has gone out of control. I am mainly in the depressed cycle. On the nights I don’t work late I go home and sleep until about 8, stay awake for another two hours, and then go back to sleep until 7. On nights like tonight when I have to work (past 10 tonight, probably past 10 again tomorrow) I drink as much caffeine as I can and hope I stay awake for the drive home. My life has become so wretched my wife doesn’t want to talk to me anymore. I’m not exaggerating about that—last night she suggested that “maybe things would be better if we communicated less often” because I just have nothing to report other than work and sleep. I haven’t called my dad or other family for the same reason, they want to know all about how my life in Miami is, and I have absolutely nothing to talk about.

Work is just crap. I was trying not to say anything bad about the new place for six months, remembering how bad my old job was, and how I traveled over a thousand miles to get away. But I certainly didn’t sign up for things like back-to-back fifteen-hour days and an office where sometimes it seems that nobody is expected to work except me. My boss keeps telling me “you are the most important person in the office, we really need you to hold things together.” Yeah, maybe because I’m the only person that does anything. And he and the big boss are fond of pulling stunts like “oh, this project due in two days? We need you to do (what amounts to about five days’ solid work) on top of that for the same project and it’s still going to be due in two days–not that we’re even going to use your results, but then we can tell the CEO we’re doing something at least.” My office mates are absolutely horrified, they were told they were going to get a leader who was going to be able to teach them a lot of new things, and I haven’t been able to teach them any of it, and they think they’re next up to be treated like that. I’ve got 24 salespeople who are waiting on data analysis that I simply cannot do thanks to constantly racing to meet impossible deadlines, software that hasn’t shown up two months after it was ordered because our legal department holds up even the most basic contracts, and the inability of the whole organization to comprehend what analysis even is or how it’s done. And I’d love to teach them, but…. Well, my wife’s already told me that she will leave me if I quit my job, so, I’m stuck with that. If I break down here, I break down, but there’s nowhere else I can go.

Needless to say I haven’t been able to put into place any of the good suggestions any of you have made, and I am sorry for that. I was finally able to make an appointment with a psychiatrist to try to get the level of my meds back in order—but it’s not for another month. It was honestly the earliest I could get one, and I had been even considering flying back to my old doctor for an appointment (lack of vacation time scuppered that). I went on a hike over the weekend, but I suppose in my haste to get out of the apartment I forgot that hiking on a paved path in the Everglades is not the same as hiking in a mountainous national forest, and I spent the last five miles in a heatstroke delirium; I still bear blisters the size and shape of a luggage tag on the bottoms of both feet. Walking anywhere this week is out, driving anywhere but to and from work is out as well. I guess it’s OK that I don’t have anywhere to go for a while.

So if anyone can think of anything I can do now to help myself, my god, I’d love to hear it. Assuming, of course, that those solutions don’t involve taking vacation or sick time, which I have almost none; walking or driving anywhere; or seeking alternate employment. Because at the moment I’ve already lost my kids, and my wife is going to be next.

20

You say you like animals? Can you get a kitten or two?

What are you and your wife fighting about so much?