My Husband Got Promoted and We Never See Him. How Do You Handle It?

.

My life exactly. My husband is gone from 7:30 to 9pm and is our of town at least 1 night a week. He gets Friday off and doesn't work weekends. Sometimes he is out of town all week and comes home on Friday. Yep, it sucks. Mostly for him. He doesn't get to see the kids as much, and he misses out. My kids miss him too. They always ask about him etc. I hate it, but I know that he is good at his job, he is sucessful, and he is a good provider. My husband (and yours too, I'm sure) wants to be even MORE sucessful, move up MORE, make MORE money....and there is nothing wrong with that.

I just ask that my husband be WITH THE KIDS when he is home. I understand that he needs his own time too, but he NEEDS to spend time with them when he is around.

BTW, my dad was ALWAYS gone when I was little. I am very close with him, and although I think he missed out on a lot, he is very sucessful and always provided us with everything.

Money isn't everything, sucess isn't everything, but somebody has to make money. Sure beats being unemployed

Dear J.,
My husband works from 6am to 11pm sometimes 1am, and on saturdays and sundays he sometimes work half a day. So yeah, I know what you are going through. I do my best to make him feel appreciated, and he does his best to make the little time we have together awesome!!! I do think it is a lot more to the quality than the quantity of time. I sometimes feel so out of place, like I dont have a real adult to talk to since I am a stay at home mom. But I understand he is working to give us a better life, so I try to support him as best I can though I hate not to see him at all!!! I really miss him too. But, what can we do about it? Feeling bad about it certainly wont help, will it?

I hear ya!! My husband just got promoted 2 weeks ago and we went from talking through out the entire day to maybe talking for 5 mins at night. I hate it!! BTW, did I mention my husband works out of town Mon through Fri - so I know I don't get to see him during the week. We were already used to the working out of town part since he has done this for 5 years now, but we were at least able to talk through out the day and had constant updates on the kids and how are days were going. Now he doesn't get into his hotel until 10 or 11 at night and by that time (most of the time) I am already asleep. So when he calls I am woken up and can't remember half the stuff I wanted to even tell him about.

I don't really have any advise for ya, but just wanted to share that I am in the same boat. Something I have tried to do is make special things for him to know he is appreciated, ie my husbands favorite is fresh strawberries with cool whip and angel food cake. So his first night home I made sure I had it ready fresh and ready. Another thing (again cooking, hehehe) I did was made him meatload (his fav). Also, I always try to have all the house chores done so that it is one less thing he has to worry about and then our weekends are free for just us and the kids.

Good Luck!

We invested in a small laptop my husband takes with him when he travels and do a video link so the kids can SEE him to say goodnight. Also consider changing your daughters bed time to a little later. You are the one who is sounding a lonely. Talk to him! Make a plan on how to reconnect. He should make time to text or call you during the day. If he is not willing to do that then there may be more trouble than just his job. Good luck!

My husband and I haven't been on one date in 3 years! We are like ships passing in the night! We have a 3 yr old a 21 mo old and I am 7 mos pg. with our 3rd. Sometimes i wonder how that happened!LOL! I always slept with my kids, still do with my 21 mo old and I will with my 3rd as well. I am a SAHM and my hubby owns his own contracting co. so the summers he works 7 days a week from 10am to 10pm sometimes later. Everyone wants their jobs done at the same time. he is also building our dream house with his own two hands (4 years in the making). So for me it is so important for him to have time with the kids, how we do that is he stays home with them in the am while I go to the gym. They have their breakfast ritual every morning and they love it. When he is working close to home he stops by for lunch and see's them then too. As far as our relationship goes it is really hard but we stay up late and talk, have sex or whatever,sometimes just cuddle. It is easy to get emotionally detached, especially when you don't sleep in the same bed as we do, but I talked to him about it and even though we don't go out we still show lots of affection for each other, text each other thruought the day, send pics, whatever. Just letting him know I appreciate what he does for his family makes him WANT to be home even if he can't be. There is no easy answer, it sucks, but you have to make it work for you somehow. Good luck and just think about all of us who don't get to go to Hawaii and leave our kids behind!LOL! Not a shot, just jealous!!!

You have a lot of good advice here; I just wanted to add what has worked for me. When my girls were little (they are now almost 9 & 7) my husband (a consultant) traveled 5 days a week, so he was only home on weekends. I was a “single Mom” during the week and we spend quality family time on the weekends.

For the past 4 years his assignment has mostly been in DC. He leaves at 6:30am and gets home between 7-8pm. The girls are older, so they understand. They see him in the morning & weekends during the school year and we adjust the bedtimes in the summer so they stay up later and see him in the evenings and weekends.

My 2½ year old is a little harder – he LOVES his time with Daddy, so… I just keep him up until after Daddy gets home. He sleeps in during the summer and takes a longer nap during the school year. Since I stay home with him and he is not in school yet, this has worked well for us.

The one thing I would recommend against is having Daddy do the bedtime routine. If you husband travels or has to stay late at work and your daughter is use to Daddy putting her to bed, you will have a VERY difficult time getting her to settle down and go to sleep if he is not home. Just have her Daddy time be fun time (gives you a break) and then you put her to bed as normal. Kids thrive on routine, try to keep close to the same every night.

You are not alone! Good-Luck ~ B.

Yes.. I deal with the same issues :0( My husband works at a big insurance company during the week. Leaves the house at 8:15 and gets home about 7... He got promoted to becoming a manager and they relocated offices and now he has to leave at 7:50am and doesn't get home until about 8:45pm :0( It's very hard and very frustrating for me.. I feel like I'm with my son ALL THE TIME and every night he asks if "daddy is coming home tonight"... It's sad.. I never have an answer for him because my husbands schedule is so crazy right now (has been for the past 5 months).. Plus I feel like I'm a single mom and sometimes at my wits end with my testy 3.5 year old.
To spend time with our son, my husband gets up at 6am and wakes my son up to play with him (not sure how I feel about that because on the weekends my son is accustomed to getting up at 6am now, ugh). My husband and I went on a small trip a month ago for 3 days just to rekindle our flame... We normally do that every summer for about 6 days.. This year was different because they "need" him at work... We do "date" night one or two times per month.. A family member or babysitter comes over and we go out to dinner, drinks and a movie.. That has always saved us and I really look forward to "date night"... We even do "date day" and go to the beach by ourselves then lunch.. EVERYYYYY couple needs alone time and that's how we do it..
I know it's hard, I'm in the same position~ Good luck

When my children were young we had a similar situation, but I lived near family and that helped quite a bit.

My husband and I sat down and discussed how we could make it better and this helped. We made the weekend ours. He rarely worked on the weekend and did his best to be with us then. He made his best efforts to be in town on important school events and after awhile made sure he was home by 7pm every night... when he was in town. I fed the kids early and kept a plate ready for him. I kept the kids up a little later and he helped put them to bed/read. Then we had about 1 hour to veg in front of the t.v. together.

I don't know if it is possible with your husbands job, but often compromises can be made. Of course I enjoyed not having to worry about money and that was part of the compromise, but my husband understood I was okay with less money in lieu of more time. We bought a smaller home to ensure this philosophy. So when the company tried to get him to move to the main office away from my family, he just always said no.

My advice.....Talk to your husband.......don't accuse him. Find common ground and see where your compromises can be made. Work together.

My fiance and I have a similar situation when we first got together the company he was working at was less demanding and he could go in around 9ish and be home at a decent hour 5-6pm. But soon after becoming a couple he took a position at another company that is much more demanding of his time he's usually out of the house between 6:30AM - 7:30AM (& he's up much earlier working from home) and doesn't get home until 7:30PM (that's the norm) and sometimes later and even when he gets home he pulls out his laptop to check emails. It is frustrating and irritating to see him work all the time but I know its hard on him as well so I try not to complain but talk to him about how we (the family) miss him and set up designated times where we can spend time together and individually with him and at the same time he needs time to himself but that rarely happens. His schedule took me time to get used to but now I am used to it for the most part but I do miss him and communicating via texts and IMs can get frustrating at times. But I know he works hard for us and his job is demanding so I try to not add to it but enjoy our time together and constantly remind myself this schedule isn't forever but it will be for a good amount of time.