How does your partner react?

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Leading on from my night of disaster (see here), when I came home last night at 2am my wife was awake and started nagging at me for working so long and saying things like no one will say thanks so why do it. As soon as I woke up today she started again with the whole thing.

I know that we are basically all geeks here and we love our jobs (IT) and that we do it because we are dedicated to it (ie not for the fame or fortune).

Which leads me to the question, how does your other half/partner react when you have to work late, or on weekends etc? Do they nag you, get angry and abuse you or are they understanding and do they support you?

 

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While not in IT in the way most on here are (don't work on servers, etc) I can end up having to work abroad for days on end as part of my job. (so far only happened 3 times but its going to become more soon).
So long as i have enough notice the g/f dosen't mind too much. It gives us time to sort thing slike kids out etc When its short notice that i have to go away, then theres the moaning abou time and having to do it etc, but that's not too bad. And of course when it comes to the day i have to go, she always says its ok for me to go and be away fro 3 days or more so long as i bring her back something nice! It seems in my case bribery helps ease the nagging.

And i know what ya mean when you say that, working hard and staying late, seems like there's never any thanks or recognition, so why bother? One reason i still do things like this is because i know that if i don't do it no one else will! Thats when you get the attention, albeit all negative and you get the boss complaining to you about not doing your job. So at the end of the day you do the jobs no one else wants to just because it stops the hassle.

 

I guess it depends on the person, but i know when I have had a shite day at work all I want to do is have a quiet 5 minutes to myself. But I never get that, I get home to find my partner nagging about something or asking questions. I just want 5 minutes to myself is that too much to ask?? After spending almost 1 hour in nose to tail traffic and some muppet cutting me up on the round about because they did not use there indicator. Aaah!!

Anyway, we've split, she never liked computers or was interested in what I do, but I still had to listen to her work problems in accounting There were times when I was late because I had to stay until 8pm and we made plans but i always (unlike her) phoned or TXT.

I don't know Nugget life's not perfect but I can see where your coming from on this and why you posted the question. But then again at least you have a job, wife, loving family. My best mate lost his new born baby (well actually Cali was 6 weeks old so I surpose that's not new?) two weeks ago due menegitis (not sure if I spelt that right). He's really struggling to keep the relationship together and his sanity.

 

Only time will tell how my other half will react, Considering I have only been in it 3 months but when I had to stay late the other day to apply some hotfixes to a server and reboot it (after 6pm) she was not best pleased. I got the "couldn't someone else do it" and the "why can't you do it during working hours" etc. I must say this is the only moan I have heard from her and she has been very supportive about my whole career change into the world of IT.
Not got round to telling her that I may be on call in between christmas and new year, perhaps later

I guess you should be concerned only when your other half does not give a damn if you come home and at what time.

 

aahh, we say " all world is the same small place".
We are lucky becouse our job is our hobby too, but sometimes ask for 5 minutes is not asking too much !!
Anyway i can't leave a server inside down and just say " right see you monday", and something i am not able
to prevent before.
How many times the "10 minutes job" became 10 hours.
Ciao

 

FACT : Women Nag get used to letting it drift in one ear and straight out the next.

 

I have read through the rest of the post and not one has mentioned effective communication as I believe this is what is lacking in majority of relationships.

However, one having to work late from time to time isn't really the issue here as most of you have mentioned nagging on and on. Lets look at it like this if you're expecting your loved one to be home at a certain time and they don't turn up or phone on time to state what the situation is anyone male or female would resent this.

On the other hand yes, no relationship is perfect and my wife understands this so when am late or can't make it she knows I'd make it up to her another day. The morale of the story is regardless of work catastrophes we should learn to communicate effectively, at the end of the day the server doesn't often go down each week

 

In contrast to what has already been written - my girlfriend is completely OK with it - long hours, no notice, Xmas 24/7 call-out etc. She even offers to do all of the house work/cooking etc. while I'm building up to take an exam - she's really encouraging and attempts to understand what I'm talking about..... (I'm not sure how much of it stays in though!)

As I've written before, I planned to volunteer with the server team after my normal working hours every day to get experience and a foot in the next door - due to some politics at work the time scale of when I was going to do it has moved up, I simply sent her an e-mail at work and then phoned her - not to ask permission, but to make sure it was the right move career/politics wise considering the current climate at work - again, nothing but encouragement and support and valid discussion/criticism.

I'm looking to climb the company ladder - that's just me - and she's completely behind me. I've even warned her that I would like to be the guy that the directors/senior managers come to to fix huge issues that affect 1000's/10000s of users, any time morning, noon or night - again, nothing but complete support.

I think it helps that she is just as driven in her career. She's been writing reports for board of directors/CEO of the charity she works for the other day (so far out of her job description its silly!) and had to stay late at work - it doesn't bother me because she is doing what she wants and she is getting great recognition for it. She's leaving her current job in a week, and she has the personal e-mail addresses for 3 of the directors - all of them want her to keep in contact with them so when she moves on from her new job, she contacts them directly to see if there is any work going!

Extra money to do more/working late - I get it, she doesn't - but we're not in either of our professions for the money, we're in it for the responsiblity and to climb the ladder to a level that actually challenges us on a daily basis - unfortunately, neither of us are there yet!

 

I like to think so also

I think that is the part that can be conquered - the communication between each other like onoski said. My g/f and I always lets each other know whats going on.

For example, her birthday is in December, on a Monday and her mum is throwing her a sit-down lunch on the Sunday - not a bad deal at all and I get on with her family, but at work we're aware that some overtime shifting workstations around and installing them is coming up on this Sunday - for the extra £500 which is what its worth - my g/f and I sat down together and agreed that the money would come in handy and "it's only a family meal and doesn't matter if you're not there..." (said in the nicest possible way I hope )

If I know in advance that she's going to be late home, no problems, if her working late is going to cost us money then I do have an issue but other than that - communication channels are wide open!

 

I'm 1 week into my job and we've had no training yet because of a massive delay from our client and as a result, we were informed we may have to go to London for a week or 2. This made my girlfriend really mad(of 3 years and living together) and she nagged at me about how ridiculous it was.

I then got told a day or 2 later that we definitely wouldn't be going to London and that we would still be able to do the training up home. This made my girlfriend happy

I got to work yesterday and we had a meeting, client still holding us up and we're now a week behind - we're going to London for at least a week now.

After a whole week at work I got in last night and had to endure her nagging and whining which eventually became an argument - nice friday night. The main reason she's mad though is because she's doing her exams over the period I'm in London and that it's like a paid holiday. She thinks I should give her some of the money I'll get for going because it's her who's "suffering".

It's complete bullshit and I nearly walked out because I was so angry.

Things are a lot calmer this morning though

 

Caroline has always been supportive of me in whatever I do. When we had our first child we sat down and discussed what to do and it was pretty clear that I had more earning potential. Since then I've been the sole wage earner and she understands that I have to do what I can to bring in the money.

I work long hours, often with a lot of travel time on top of that. Not to mention a huge amount of time glued to my PC at home. She understands it's part of what I do and it all adds to our income one way or another.

Last year I managed to pull off more than eighteen months of continuous work [pretty good for a freelancer] on a good rate. It meant I spent a lot less time with the family but it padded the old bank account and allowed us to spend three weeks in Disneyworld over Christmas [with not one mention of a computer].

I honestly don't know what I'd do without her.

 

My wife never stops moaning when i work late, am on call and have to go in in the middle of the night or have to work away from home for a couple of days. It apparently was part of the small print in the marriage contract that I didn't read.

oh well.

Thing is, they can't have it both ways. If I DIDN'T have to do all the out of hours work whenever it was required, then my job wouldn't be important enough that I am paid more than twice what she earns. I wouldn't do it, of course, because I love what I do, but I COULD leave IT and get a 9-5 desk job. It MIGHT put a BIT of a strain on our finances however, if I were to take a 25k pay cut

 

Aaah the joys of being single and having a job that doesn't involve working daft hours

 

Yeah, but the joys of a job that doesn't have daft hours + a loving wife who doesn't nag or whine is even better. I'm lucky enough to have both.

Well, I do have to work till 9pm on Monday & Wednesdays at the moment (extra job part time lecturing) but that's bringing in some useful extra cash and will hopefully look good on my CV. Only 2 more weeks of that to go for a while.

 

Well my better half is a teacher and although she finishes teaching at half two each day she regularly puts in the extra hours afterwards and at home. There's many a night that we sit opposite each other at the dining room table with our laptops out!

I guess we just get on with it. she works late somedays, I work late others.

As she makes a good £10k a year more than me I tend to do most of the domestic stuff, letting her just cook as she loves it. Personally if I were cooking it would be beans on toast everyday! I know that she has to get the work done, where as most of time time I simply want to get the work done.

 

While I have that in a girlfriend, I have a job that works normal hours and I hate it - I suppose its because I enjoy the buzz of something kicking off and having to work any number of short or long hours to get it sorted - there are a couple of teams in my company that have someone on call and more likely than not they get called up/out during their week on call - I can't wait until I have that opportunity!

.....damn I'd be a real geek if I didn't have a girlfriend

 

My wife is a teacher also Simon and is often home much later than me. I do quite a lot around the house including most of the cooking. She does do all the washing though.