Despite the title of this blog, I rarely talk about the specifics of being a doctor’s wife anymore. But I thought this might be interesting not only for doctors’ spouses but for the spouses of others who have not-a-regular-9-to-5-career, too.
One of the most common questions I get is whether being a doctor’s wife is lonely. Sure. Being the spouse of a physician can be lonely at times. It really can. No different from being the spouse of a fire fighter or an accountant during tax season or many other professions. It’s less lonely, I imagine, than being the spouse of someone who’s gone for many days at a time – like a pilot or a member of the armed forces or a long-haul trucker or a consultant or many other professions.
It has its ups and downs, like being married to anybody with any job. And it has times where you will be alone, and/or in charge of the bulk of the housework/child-rearing, just like being married to anybody with a not-strictly-9-to-5 job.
Now that my husband is a practicing physician, the loneliest times are call weeks. So I thought I would tell you, today, what it’s like when my husband is on call. I’d be fascinated to know what YOU do when your spouse is gone.
We’re going into a call week this Saturday, which means that I may not see much of my husband for the next seven days. He goes into the hospital early. Depending on the patient load, he may come home really late. Or he may come home and then have to go back to the hospital, or come home and then have to spend several hours in his office, on the phone with the hospital staff or returning patient calls. There’s no guarantee he’ll see our daughter on any given day. There’s no guarantee he’ll be free to help with washing the dishes or the child, that he’ll be home to eat meals, that he’ll be free to talk through our separate days, that he’ll be next to me as I fall asleep.
To deal with call weeks, I do several things:
- I prep Carla by talking enthusiastically about our special Girls’ Week. I use lots of exclamation points. Sometimes we’ll go out for a special lunch date together. We’ll paint our toenails. We’ll eat snacky dinners. We’ll watch movies. We’ll be a little loosey goosey with the “no screens on school days” rules. If Carla feels sad about not seeing her father, we’ll make him a special art project. We may not bathe as frequently as normal.
- I go easy on myself with meal planning. Instead of focusing on healthy food, which I try to do most days, I make easy and comforting food the priority (note: “healthy” and “easy and comforting” are not necessarily mutually exclusive). For me, that’s things like tacos and chicken paprikas and pizza and grilled shrimp from the prepared foods counter at the grocery store. Bonus points for things that are easy to prepare and leave abundant leftovers. I may buy a special treat for myself, and possibly for Carla. I don’t limit myself to one piece of leftover Easter candy. I make sure I have a bottle of wine chilling in the fridge.
- I try to schedule fun things for myself during the week. Usually, my writing time is sacred. I try to treat my day like a real work day – albeit shorter than the typical 9-to-5. So I reserve coffees and lunch dates for call weeks. This week, I have a coffee, a lunch date, and a play date for me and Carla. At night, after Carla’s in bed, I curl up on the sofa with a glass of wine and/or some ice cream/rapidly dwindling Easter candy and watch Candy TV: Real Housewives, sitcoms my husband isn’t interested in, reruns of Seinfeld or Gilmore Girls or Friends or Family Feud.
- I try to maintain a (barf) Positive Attitude. I say cheerleadery things to myself and to Carla: We are so proud of Daddy. He is making people feel better. He works so hard, to take care of other people and to take care of us. We’ll be back to normal in just X days! We can do it! And anyway, missing Daddy helps us to appreciate him more when he’s here! I try to think cheering thoughts: I get to watch only what I want to watch this week! I can go to bed whenever I want! I am so glad I’m not a doctor! Hey, I didn’t say they were cheering to anyone but ME.
One of the things that’s most difficult for me during call weeks is to not unload on my husband when he’s around. Call is extremely stressful for him. He’s seeing super sick patients. He may have 11 patients to see or he may have 25. He may have really difficult procedures. He may be extra tired from being paged or getting called into the hospital overnight.
It’s not unstressful for me: suddenly, I’m solely responsible for house and child and self. Which can be easy breezy or exhausting on any given day. But I try really really hard to remember that I shouldn’t just throw the toddler and the dishes at my husband when he manages to show up at a reasonable hour. And I shouldn’t complain too loudly or vigorously about how stressful my day was.
The best part about call weeks is that they END. For us, call takes place roughly every seven weeks. This differs from practice to practice, and we’re very lucky. So even though they are lonely weeks, they aren’t very frequent. And they don’t last terribly long.
I’m sure life can be lonely for MANY spouses out there, for all kinds of professions. And, in fact, I would be really interested in what it’s like for you, when your spouse isn’t there. How often is s/he gone? What’s the schedule like then, and how does it deviate from normal? How do you deal with the loneliness, and with the stress of being In Charge By Yourself?
Mine has a pretty steady schedule, but occasionally he has to go away for a few days on a business trip. Also, it’s common for him during the summer to take two of the kids on a weeklong vacation. During those times, my strategy is similar to yours: I loosen everything up and I increase the treats. I would have thought that Paul and I BOTH like a pretty steady schedule, but when I’m gone he keeps the schedule, and when he’s gone I drop it like a hot potato. Dinner: whenever! and maybe let’s order pizza! Kid bedtime: as long as they go to bed before I do! My own bedtime: hey, how often do I get to stay up and watch TV without anyone pointing at the clock and noting it’s 45 seconds past our usual bedtime?
Even when the kids were little, I found it somewhat fun—but I think that’s because it’s rare. I would like to express sympathy for your situation without sounding bad in either of the directions I can think of that kind of sympathy sounding bad. Just the “I can see how sometimes that sucks, despite the good things” level of patting your shoulder and doing the right facial expression. Specifically I think I would dislike the part where I feel like I shouldn’t vent about my day or toss him the child, because his work is so useful and good and noble. I totally agree, and yet I would have a bit of resentment, and then I would feel bad for feeling resentful.
Yes, to the last part: a tinge of resentful feelings and then guilt about it. I think it really helps to have Carla, in that respect. Because I am constantly saying positive things to HER about his work and why it’s important to share him etc etc, I wind up saying them to myself, too. But let me tell you, the week AFTER call, if I am still doing all of X myself, I get pretty cranky!
I love how you handle it with little Carla. Lots of exclamations marks and “Girls’ Week!” That is brilliant. I don’t have this issue in my grown-up-me household, my husband is a strictly 9 to fiver, and I’m grateful. But my Dad was a pilot, so we had girls’ weeks all the time when I was younger. And it was great. Much more relaxed (though we were in middle/high school by the time he got that job): we’d go out for dinners, go over to my cousins’ house on a school night to watch football. My mom didn’t like to cook, anyway, so this was an awesome setup for her! 😉
Just this week my husband did go out to a baseball game with some coworkers. Never happens. NEV. ER. I relished two episodes of Kimmy Schmidt!! Been wanting to start that one for a while now.
Oh it is so nice to hear that from an adult perspective!
And yes, those occasional one-night breaks are kind of delicious.
I love this topic! My husband is an electrical lineman, so the times he’s gone are usually 1) totally unpredictable (unless you believe weathermen are reliable, which, HAAAA) and 2) usually concentrated into a short period of time, like one overnight or a couple of days. He and my son also hunt 8 months out of the year so they’re gone a lot doing that or going to bed at like 7 so they can get up at 4. So I get a pretty significant amount of time with me and both kids or just me and my daughter.
I think that most women (at least most I know) feel the way you do about their spouse being gone – like it’s time to batten down the hatches and just get through. Which I TOTALLY understand. And I know it’s totally different for those whose spouses are gone weeks or months at a time. But I am the opposite – l don’t mind it at all. (Which I realize sounds terrible, but hear me out, lol.)
I love my husband a lot and we have lots of fun together and he’s a major source of support and we share house/kids duties equally, etc., etc. But I am also a creature who needs time away from other human beings. There are three other people and two dogs in this house who require my regular attention and it gets exhausting for me. So a break in that constant talking/interaction helps me mentally. Probably because when my husband is gone I don’t feel guilty for letting the kids have a movie marathon so I can sit quietly and read a book or take a bath.
My husband is also a “go, go, go” person. He’s always got a project or a hobby going and I’m a homebody. So his hunting trips feed both his need to get out and do stuff and my need to stay in my pajamas and read and watch TV he scoffs at.
FINALLY (lord I didn’t realize I had so much to say about this), for us, absence really does make the heart grow fonder. We get bogged down in the “business partner” aspect of parenting/marriage a lot – i.e. just figuring out logistics. Mostly because our kids are just at that age where their schedules alone require the skills of a seasoned personal assistant but who can afford that?? Anyway, when we get some time apart I feel like it rekindles those “Hey, I really missed you! I really kind of like you and think you’re cute!” feelings.
I totally relate to the introvert aspect of this! I think it really helps, in a way, to be an introvert with a spouse who’s away a lot for whatever reason. But probably extroverts have their own extrovert ways of dealing with it too.
And YES to the “absence makes the heart grow fonder” thing! Sometimes it takes a call week to realize just how much my husband does around here. And even just cuddling on the couch watching TV the week after takes on this extra sense of special.
My husband travels for work, and he is gone from early Monday morning until late Thursday night or Friday during the day. His schedule used to be about 66% travel, but it has lightened up considerably over the last year. He is in the midst of a bit of a burst of trips, and he is actually stuck in the San Francisco airport at this moment! The tough weeks are when he has to go on the road in back to back weeks; the weekend is just a whirlwind of trying to get stuff done. We have a 10 year old son, but he has had this job since my son was 3, so things are definitely easier than they used to be. We are very lucky that we live in the same city as both my parents and my in-laws, so I have a lot of help when I need it. My mother-in-law will ask if I need them that week, and they will pick my son up from school or come over and watch him, depending on what I have going on. Dinner is definitely less structured than when he is in town, especially when my son as a bunch of activities. We take advantage of the fact that my son and I like McDonald’s more than my husband does! When my husband is home, he works from home, so he is in charge of school drop off and pick up, dealing with house maintenance-type things, and getting our son ready for activities. When he is gone, we all have to get up earlier so my son can go to before school care, and he is at aftercare longer. I have to leave work earlier to get him to his activities. I will also buy myself a treat at the store, to enjoy in the evenings. I find that I stay up later watching shows and movies that we don’t watch together. This week, I have been binge watching previous seasons of Outlander! I definitely agree with the fact that having him gone makes me appreciate him more when he is here. I also enjoy being in charge of the remote. 🙂
Oooh — that his absence completely switches up your and your son’s schedule would be very tricky. How nice that you have family to help! That sounds like a life saver.
It wouldn’t work without help from family, that is for sure. Even though our schedule does change when he is gone, we get his travel schedule 3 months at a time, so we have plenty of time to plan. I already know that when he is gone in May, my son has a baseball game at the same time I need to be at a meeting about summer camp. I am already talking to our friend about carpooling. Another thing I forgot to mention is that my husband is very good at letting me vent. We try and talk every night he is out of town, and the first 10 minutes is me filling him in on the day and also complaining about things. This lasted about 20 minutes when my son was a 3 yo!
I was married to a police officer years ago (before he passed away). Sometimes he was on nights which was easier because I could sleep most of the time he was working as did our son. When he was on days, I was also working so it was great to come home to be together. Years after that, he would take a 2 week horse trip out west. I loved it! For all those reasons of watching whatever I wanted, staying up late on the weekends, eating whatever I wanted and doing whatever I wanted. But, it was always good to have him back home again.
.
(Whoops, having comment issues.)
When the kids were smaller, my husband leaving was a big thing. I still vividly remember the horror of the two weeks he went to China in 2013. The kids were 4, 2, & in-utero (and making me hurl regularly). He took down the 2-year-old’s crib before leaving, because he was convinced it was time for a big-boy bed in advance of having a new baby.
That child didn’t sleep the whole trip. Naps were gone immediately. Bedtime was a joke. It was December and we had friends and family obligations. I never bring it up any more because the couple times I did he ROLLED HIS EYES AT ME, but, I’ve got to be honest, I haven’t really forgiven him for it. It’s not a big thing – I rarely think of it. But if I do I’m a bit mad.
But now! The kids are almost 8, 5, & 3. Two are in school all day. When he’s gone, life is good. (When he’s here, life is good, too.) No cooking, much less screen monitoring, and I actually go to bed earlier (and feel fantastic for the extra sleep). When he’s here, we hang out for at least an hour after kid bedtime – after which I stay up later for my introvert time. With him gone, I get an hour more sleep!
The one downside is that every night of the week one child or another has some sort of extra-curricular from swimming to dance to karate. Having to bring the siblings along, instead of leaving them home with the other parent, and trying to keep them quiet/engaged is sometimes difficult.