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My partner often travels for work as he is a strategy consultant and gets assigned to projects overseas
He could be in Jakarta for a few weeks, back home for a week and get called off again for a project in Germany for months. I find his bosses inconsiderate of his family/spouse/partners as they never seem to give a week's notice in advance before sending him off. It's always usually a day or two before.
This is hard on me as I never get the sufficient amount of time to mentally and emotionally prepare myself.
At the same time, I feel like it's being imposed on me and that my feelings and choices are never taken into consideration. He loves his job a lot and is also practically married to it.
He claims that he's doing all these to support us and our future, but to me, it's just an excuse he uses to smokescreen the fact that he's just doing it for his own career fulfillments. This is because I am able to support myself and I have a low financial dependance on him at this moment.
The frequency of him traveling overseas for work has recently shot up.
Initially it was bearable because he would be sent to neighbour-ing countries and the time differences would be bearable. Our timings would still coincide when we both get back from our respective days at work.
However, recently he has been taking more and more projects further away.
He is currently in Berlin for a 2 month project and the time difference between us is 6 hours. He's 6 hours behind my time and it's really difficult to match our timings for a call or a skype session.
When he gets up to head to work, I am already out or in the office.
When he gets back from work, it's 4 am for me. It varies between 2 am to 6 am.
Initially, he convinced me to support him in his work and aspirations, also knowing that I had a fear of long-distance relationships due to horrible past experiences. I have attachment issues and get really frantic over distance especially when my spouse is un-contactable or not easily available/reachable.
He promised me that it would be fine and I wouldn't feel the same way again.. that he would be there to support me when I need him and that he will always be contactable on his cell phone. He promised me he would at the very least hold to those conditions.
BUT, it didn't happen that way. The moment he flew overseas, he would barely reply to texts and I would end up waiting for his reply for a whole day, and this recurs everyday.
It's hard to even catch him for a Skype session due to his long work hours and when I try to wait up for him, he will usually bail on our skype sessions and postpone it by a few hours later.
Him consistently pushing our calls later and later and failing to keep to his promises have become a norm for our relationship.
The worse part is, most of the time he's unable to reply to texts or even drop in to check up on me and ask how I am doing during the day due to his demanding and inconsiderate client.
His client would ban the usage of phones in the "war room" (as they call it) for the whole day and would call anyone out who decides to glance at their phones even if it was just for a second.
Apparently according to my spouse, there was once he called someone out and said "so you have time for personal calls now don't you? Am I paying you for that?"
I find this utterly ridiculous and inconsiderate of his client. There is no kindness and empathy in that. The client clearly doesn't care about the families of these consultants and wants to fully utilize them to get his every penny's worth.
If there was ever an emergency at home, none of the consultants would be aware of it as they can't seem to use their phones for the entire day.
I find the inability to keep to his promises and his lack of commitment as well as discipline to the LDR unsustainable for us in the long-term. I feel like he values his directors and clients more than his own relationship at times and this hurts me a lot.
When he is un-contactable, sometimes I get frantic and cry because I don't know when I'll get to talk to him again and I usually end up waiting for a whole day..this situation is recurring daily.. and I have loss a lot of sleep over it including the nights I spent waiting up just to catch him on skype.
I find him selfish for imposing this on me. I feel like I never have a choice. At the same time, he finds me selfish for feeling this way. But the truth of the matter is, both of our feelings are justified.
I feel that I cannot continue to support him anymore in this and that soon, I will find myself breaking down and walking out of this relationship. The distance and the lack of communication is taking a toll on the relationship. Sometimes, I realise that he doesn't see this as an issue.. and I am the only one who seems to have an issue with it which ultimately makes me feel dismissed, unheard and alone in this.
I feel helpless all the time and the build up in resentment is not good for us.
I don't know what to do anymore because discussing this with him is futile.
You have picked another guy to have an unsuccessful long distance relationship with. Time to break up and figure out why you keep having the same relationship over and over again.
1. If he is going to be away that long, is there a possibility you could travel with him? More than likely the room is paid by the company, you would have to fund the plane tickets. He could also ask for additional compensation from his company considering the amount of time he is being separated from you, although that would be complicated if you are not actually married.
2. Have you considered counseling? I would suggest it for yourself, first, to understand the clinging and feeling of separation while he's gone.
3. Do you have any friends or other interests to keep you occupied while he is away?
If you knew he traveled often before you became partners you should have decided before you became partners if his travel was going to be an issue.
If you voluntarily became his partner knowing he traveled he did not *impose* anything on you, you made that choice so do not blame your choice on him.
Why is it the responsibility of the employer to take the employees partner's feelings into consideration?
They employ the employee not their partner and it is up to the employee to deal with any issues their partner may have.
Either accept that things will not change as they haven't the entire time you have been partners or move on, it is that simple.
I read through all of that thinking you were married. Your not. Time to take a long, hard, honest look at whether you can continue in this relationship given the demands of his employment.
Knowing a few people in similar positions, his travel will not change. If anything it will increase.
Why is it the responsibility of the employer to take the employees partner's feelings into consideration?
They employ the employee not their partner and it is up to the employee to deal with any issues their partner may have.
Retention, primarily. But again, it is complicated by the fact they aren't married.
An employer can handle things the way they would like, but if they continually separate people from loved ones, they are risking that employee finding a better job with less travel.
It does bring to mind another couple of questions:
1. How long has the increased travel been going on?
2. Has he indicated he is unhappy with the travel? If he isn't, you have bigger issues to consider.
You ask how his clients can be so inconsiderate - how can your PARTNER be so inconsiderate?! Certainly if he puts no limits on the travel he says he is willing to do, no one else will either. They're perfectly satisfied to have him work 24 hours a days crossing the globe.
You say you are not dependent on him - that's great because it gives you options. You need to learn just how much discretion he has in taking his assignments - honestly. And then discuss if he is willing to negotiate with you and with them on a more reasonable schedule. He may have a lot more say than it appears but he just doesn't care/mind last minute plans. If he is unwilling to discuss with you then you need to decide if this is how you want to live - especially since you're not married.
How do you even get along when he's in town and at home with you? Does it make up at all for the travel or is he just as distracted even then? What are the pluses in this relationship and how much do they offset the negatives?
And is the increased travel a permanent thing, or is this a case where he has to pay his dues, so to speak, and can lean back into an easier schedule after a probationary period?
Neither person, in this case, is handling this well: the OP can't expect that her boyfriend can be at her beck and call 24/7 to the point where she's crying and worrying about postponed calls, and the boyfriend needs to be realistic and not make promises he can't keep.
OP sounds pretty needy. I have several friends whose husbands travel a lot, and they enjoy (maybe "enjoy" is the wrong word) being on their own and being able to eat the foods their husbands don't like, watch the movies they want to watch, etc. but they enjoy the time they spend as a couple, too. It's definitely an "absence makes the heart grow fonder" situation.
Last edited by fleetiebelle; 05-25-2016 at 03:12 PM..
Retention, primarily. But again, it is complicated by the fact they aren't married.
An employer can handle things the way they would like, but if they continually separate people from loved ones, they are risking that employee finding a better job with less travel.
It does bring to mind another couple of questions:
1. How long has the increased travel been going on?
2. Has he indicated he is unhappy with the travel? If he isn't, you have bigger issues to consider.
Laterin the thread they stated spouse not partner so it is not clear if they are married or not.
As far as the employer, I ask again why is it the responsibility of the employer to take a spouse/partner feelings into consideration? The employer hires the employee not their spouse/partner so the general idea is that the employee who was hired and gets paid is mature enough to make their own decisions about their employment. As far as I know the employer never calls the spouse/partner to *ask permission* to hire the employee.
As far as the *risk* of an employee leaving, they can be replaced so the company is only without said employee until someone else is hired, no big deal.
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