Marriage Actually - An honest look at marriage

Income Support

by Bald Man on July 17th, 2007

Alternative Title: How To Encourage Your “Work-Outside-the-House” Spouse

Those of you who’ve followed us around b5media for a bit will by now, I’m sure, have noticed that I am blogging less for the network. While I remain here, I have bid adieu to two other blogs that I started as well as a Channel Editor position that I held for a calendar quarter.

A big part of the reason for the “blog-simplification” is that things in the day job are hotting up. Last month saw a fair number of extra hours on a special project, and now my inability to keep my mouth shut, put my head down and do my job is leading to an explosion of additional opportunities. Altogether now, let’s have a dignified, corporate W00T!

Through this season of occasional late evenings and less frequent lunches home, Kerri has been fantastic. Her support has given me a few nuggets that seem worthy of sharing.

(Note: I write the following from our perspective in which I work outside the home and Kerri works far harder and for less pay inside the home. No sexism implied. Alter pronoun gender as needed.)

Appreciate the work he does. I realize that if there is an issue in a marriage along this line of thinking, it tends to flow the other way with the stay-at-home spouse being taken for granted. But that’s another post. Here, I’m saying appreciate the work he does. Many bread winners struggle with a sense of adequacy. Very few families are living the life depicted in advertisements with their insatiable appetite for “more.” Most bread-winners do their best, but even then not all bests are the same. Differences in education, opportunity, economy, experience and so much more can make the gap between reality and reality TV wider for some than others. Most bread winners work hard - either physically, intellectually or emotional - to provide for their families. If life isn’t all that you dreamed it would be, talk about it… but don’t denigrate the hard work being done day in and day out. Enjoy and appreciate the life you have instead of lamenting the life you don’t have.

Communicate your expectations. Allow me to illustrate: One of my long running weaknesses is sticking around at work “a few extra minutes” in order to finish something… or somethings. I’ve had a few cold dinners; Kerri’s shed a few tears. I do well for a season, but I know that my task-oriented, one-track-mind works against me. (I have a daily Outlook task reminder that says, “Go Home.” Even then I still get distracted.) With the present changes at work the pendulum of circumstance is swinging against me again, so I broke down and asked Kerri: What’s the drop dead time, after which you want a call and I shouldn’t expect to eat with the kids? Now I have a bright line. If I’m home “late,” but by the drop dead time, it’s on Kerri. If I call, we’re good. (Truly late evenings on short notice are a rarity, and when the do occur Kerri is a champ at the tip above.) If I don’t call… well, it’s only been a few days, so I haven’t been in trouble yet… I’m anticipating dinner on my own.

The point is this: Communicate and work out a common set of expectations that suit your situation. Think through each part of the day: mornings, kids, school drop-off, lunches, mid-day calls, school pick-up, evenings, etc., and come up with a common set of boundaries within which each of you are free to maneuver. No two couples will wind up with the same expectations, and that’s fine. The trouble starts when one couple has two sets of expectations.

Tell him you’re proud of him. This is kind of like the first tip, but whereas that one focused on you and your attitudes, this one is about expressing your appreciation to him. People work hard for their loved ones, and it always helps to know that the work is noticed and appreciated. Kerri frequently gives me a big hug shortly after I get home from work and tells me how thankful she is for what I do. It’s amazing how good that makes me feel. Knowing the she appreciates the work I do makes it that much less likely that I get down on myself for not providing the “lifestyles of the rich and famous.”

Take an interest in his work. Yes I say this despite having seen Kerri’s eyes glaze over within the last week as I talk about such thrilling topics as “fiduciary liability” and “401(a)(4) nondiscrimination testing.” (Really… I was, ah… just trying to help with her insomnia…. Yeah, that’s the ticket.) But I say it anyway. You don’t have to know how to do his work (unless you actually have the same job, in which case I imagine that would be quite handy,) but you ought to take an interest in it. You need the broad brush strokes, so that you have a context to understand his days. That way when he says things are going well, you can better celebrate with him, because you have some idea of why he’s happy. Likewise, when he says times are tough, you can better empathize. Try to understand a mix of both the task-focused and people-focused stuff, too. (One will likely be more difficult for you to ask about and one - probably the other - will be more difficult for him to talk about.) Depending on the season of life, either can be having a significant impact on your spouse.

Work from the same master plan. Another tip similar to an earlier one. The prior tip focused on the nitty-gritty details; this is about the big picture. A couple years ago Kerri and I were at a cross roads. While I enjoyed my work, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to make a career out of it. We were considering some serious changes (like, get up and move across an ocean changes) and it was time to step back and decide what we wanted to do. Ultimately, we decided to stay put, and part of that meant making the most of the potential available at my job. Here we are today, and that decision is beginning to bear fruit. Being on the same page helps us both keep the goal in sight when the short-term isn’t exactly what we’d like.

Work, for most of us will be an inevitable part of married life for most of those married years. Trust me; I work in the retirement plan industry, and I have a pretty good idea just how much we have saved on average, how much we’re going to need, and how long it’s going to take us to bridge the gap between the two. You will over the course of a career spend nearly as many waking hours at work as you will at home, so work ought not to be a source of additional stress within a marriage.

images: old man | sunset | windows | banksy

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POSTED IN: Pontification, Resolving Conflict