Traveling Spouses
Keeping Your Marriage Together When You're Far Apart
A plan for making your marriage grow, no matter what the distance. First of a series.
When one spouse (or both) travels regularly because of the demands of a job, a unique and unwavering pressure is put on the marriage. How do you nurture a heart-to-heart relationship when one heart is geographically distant? The frequent absence of a spouse challenges the closeness and intimacy that defines marriage, and can even harm the marriage itself.
However, when a couple makes good plans, their marriage can grow, and even thrive. Here's what you need to stay close while you're far apart.
1. Make a plan for sharing the day's happenings. This can be phone, email, or IM, but it is vital. The closeness of a relationship is directly linked to how much we know about a person--the details of his or her life and thoughts. Communication must flow freely, whether you are geographically together or apart.
Pick a time to communicate when you are both awake and rested enough to talk. If you only talk late at night, your relationship will feel the weight of the chronic tired and cranky moods, and neither spouse will have the energy to share much beyond the trivial happenings of the day.
2. Make a plan for handling life's small emergencies. What should the home spouse do when the car needs repairs while the road spouse is away? When the house needs repairs?
I've found that Dale wants to be in any decision I need to make about the car while he's gone. Same with things in the yard--like what to do with trees that need to be removed because of a sudden ice storm.
But when it comes to household emergencies, plumbing leaks, air conditioning repairs, and things of that sort, Dale says, in effect--do whatever you think is best, and I will think it's best. That means he doesn't try to micromanage me when he's gone or second-guess my decisions when he returns home.
Once I listened to a husband berate his wife in public for all the tiny things she did around the house that he would have done differently if he would have been home. Things like where she put the garbage cans in the garage, for instance. Yet this same wife was doing a fantastic job of raising three well-mannered, intelligent, and interested young boys, in spite of her husband's frequent absences. She should have been praised, not criticized. Make it your policy: the road spouse comes home to love, not to critique.
This series will continue with an article addressing the "his world"--"her world" problem that traveling spouses face. Also see the blog: On the Road...Again? The Unexpected Good of a Traveling Spouse. For more on Traveling Spouses, click here.
