husband prefers career to marriage

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-10-2006
husband prefers career to marriage
14
Mon, 04-10-2006 - 12:32pm

I've been married for nearly 2 years to a man that I've known for nearly 10 years. He's pursuing a Ph.D. in a subject he feels passionately about, and he hopes to become a professor once he completes his dissertation in the next year or two. I'm proud of his commitment and I know that he will have a very successful career.

However, due to short-term research opportunities and temporary teaching positions in different cities and abroad, my husband's work has required us to live apart for months at a time for much of the last several years. (We got married in the middle of it all.)

It's been increasingly difficult for me to be okay with our time apart. While I understand and appreciate the pressures of beginning an academic career in a competitive market, I'm beginning to worry that there's no end to the personal accommodations my husband will make in order to take advantange of academic opportunities. He's currently considering taking a semester-long teaching appointment in a city six hours away. But he taught at a school four hours away last semester, and he lived abroad for four months prior to that. It's as if he spends a few months at home, checks "relationship time" off his list, and then feels free to pursue the next thing. I have a great job, and we live in a great city. It's not realistic for me to follow him for these short-term appointments.

He says that this is what he needs to do to be competitive in the job market, but I don't want to live life dreading when he will go away next. I believe that our relationship is what is always being compromised here. He never says no to a career opportunity for the sake of our relationship. Any objections I raise are interpreted as me being selfish and not supporting his career goals. I feel like I have no voice here. I'd like to feel like our marriage is a priority for him. I'm truly at my wit's end. Any advice would be so much appreciated. Thanks.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 08-04-2003
Mon, 04-10-2006 - 2:18pm
Unfortunately, the two of you have different priorities and he's very single-minded in the pursuit of his goals.


Carrie

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
Mon, 04-10-2006 - 8:40pm

Did he know that he'd have to do assignments like this before you got married? Did you know? Did you think that getting married would suddenly change what he was going to do?

I'm asking because I would think that a teaching job, especially a good one and while trying to find tenure, would require some movement. It just makes sense. There aren't great schools with great pay everywhere.

I know you said that you have a good job and you live in a great city, but where are YOU sacrificing to keep the two of you together? Why can't you follow him around if you miss him so much? He's getting a doctorate and been working towards this goal forever, so I know it isn't a new thing. The thing is, you COULD follow him but you don't want to. You want him to let you have what you want as a test of his love. But you aren't giving up what you want to show him your love. Sure it may set you back financially and career-wise, but isn't that what you keep wanting him to do?

Jen

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 04-11-2006 - 1:52am

Welcome to the board, Elizabeth614 ~ I'm sorry you're in the position you're in. I completely understand how it feels to want to be a priority in your relationship, yet feel that you're at the bottom of the list. I suspect, based on what your husband has said ("Any objections I raise are interpreted as me being selfish and not supporting his career goals.") that you feel you're at the bottom of his priorities because you are. It sounds like anything short of everything he wants (travel, studies, no matter what that means to your marriage) is a compromises that he is unwilling to even consider. His goal is important, nothing else, and I have to wonder where it will stop. Once he's achieved his goal will he be satisfied to sit back or will there be more higher goals to be achieved? You, on the other hand, want a husband, a relationship, a marriage. You see him as quite willingly sacrificing your marriage, he sees you as selfish to want a relationship. I'm wondering...why did he want to get married? And how did you have time for a relationship before your marriage?


I'm interested in hearing more, and in hearing the answers to the questions and suggestions that Jen (Imasillynut) has made before I can form a more solid opinion on this and hopefully have a suggestion or two that might help.







~ cl-2nd_life

"Experience is what you get
when you don't get what you want."

~ Author unknown








"Ignoring the facts
does not change the facts"
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-10-2006
Tue, 04-11-2006 - 11:51am

Thanks for your responses, everyone. Jen: yes, I generally knew that this was how it was going to be before we got married. I know his career is important to him, and I support that. I didn't necessarily think that getting married would change anything.

However, now that this has been going on for several years, I just wish that the decisions wouldn't always be so automatic. My husband seems able to switch gears very quickly--as much as he's happy with me when he's with me, he's just as happy working on his career without me. I would like to feel like these decisions are hard to make, or that he regrets having to be away, but I don't get that sense from him. I feel like he spends time with me in the "off-season" or something, has a great time, but is nevertheless always ready to move onto the next opportunity when it comes up.

As far as me sacrificing my own career, I feel like I have made these types of efforts in the past. I decided to attend a graduate school in a different part of the country to be closer to him. I put my own career on hold to live abroad with him for six months. I wish I could move with him every time he moves, but at this point we really need a stable income, and it would be hard to find that stability if we both had to pick up and move every semester.

He says that I shouldn't interpret his decisions to go away as signs that he doesn't care about me. He says I need to stop being insecure and stop trying to sabotage his career. I don't think he realizes that relationships take work--that you don't get married, prove you care about someone, and then leave things on autopilot. I feel like I'm being asked to go on autopilot again. I don't want an autopilot marriage.

Any additional thoughts or suggestions? Thanks.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
Tue, 04-11-2006 - 12:09pm

One, because it's been like this for several years, I can see where you are more than upset it's continuing. I can also see where he's confused that it's an issue now when it hasn't been before and it must be because.....

Two, I think part of the problem is that you and he are ascribing your thought processes onto each other. <> He's probably thinking that a big part of WHY he's doing all this is so you two can have a happy and stable future and have all that you want. It's his current sacrifice to make you happy in the long run, in his mind. To you it's a matter of, how can it be so easy for him to leave me? Doesn't he love me more than this? Because you would pick what would be easier to accomplish-- ie, being apart is harder than finding opportunities near by and since he keeps choosing to be away he must not love me.

So then he thinks you are being insecure-- and he's probably partly right. Though the distance thing would really bug me too. And yes, marriages take work. When he's gone does he DO anything? Do you get emails, letters, gifts in the mail, phone calls, weekend trips back into town, etc? Or is it, I'm gone--good-bye? Is he TRYING in some way to stay connected while he's gone? It could be too that he's trying but doing things that you would NEVER think mean that he misses you and wants to be with you. (Ie, my DH will do the dishes or laundry to show me he loves me and I think it's absurd. Dishes and laundry just need done, it's not a sign of affection. I want other things that HE wouldn't think of on his own. But then again, I would never have thought that washing the whites was telling my DH I loved him....)

Is there an end in sight? When will he be done with his degree and be able to "settle down" on a job? One where he will be there for a year so you can go to? Do you think you can put up with it all until then?

Jen

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 04-11-2006 - 12:38pm

"He says that I shouldn't interpret his decisions to go away as signs that he doesn't care about me."








"Ignoring the facts
does not change the facts"
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
Tue, 04-11-2006 - 3:45pm

<< In that light it sounds like he's pretty clearly in a three-some. You, him and his mistress, his career. >>

~~Cl,I don't agree with this. The situation was like this BEFORE they got married. She entered it knowingly and is now wanting him to change a game plan that works for him. (I would want different too so don't think I'm knocking that.) And chances are she's fairly hurt about all this, which would translate into anger. And then to pick a man's career, which is how men in our society measure themselves.... Well, it is easily a recipe for misunderstanding and hurt feelings. Saying that one of them or the other is more at fault or selfish or what-not isn't going to get anyone anywhere. They need to find a workable solution, no matter who thinks of it or whatever, not figure out which one is more responsible. That path only leads to divorce.

Jen

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 04-11-2006 - 4:08pm

I agree with








"Ignoring the facts
does not change the facts"
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
Wed, 04-12-2006 - 9:53am

Cl,

I don't know what it is, but there is something about this situation that is making me see it totally different from you. :) I don't readily see where she's telling him that she thinks his career is important, or where she's trying to compromise at all either. It sounds like her idea of a compromise is, "I'm tired of doing it the way I agreed to, now do it this way because it's what I want."

And OP, FWIW, I would probably be going about it the same way as you are if I were in the same situation. Dh being gone would really get to me and I'd get hurt and then things would all go to pot. I'm not trying to be mean or judgemental of you. I really hope the two of you work out a workable solution for both of you. And I am really curious as to what timeline your H has on all this. When is he going to be done with these semester long assignments?

Jen

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-10-2006
Wed, 04-12-2006 - 11:34am

I really appreciate the time you both are taking to talk about this issue...it is really helping me think things through. I think both of you are making great points. Thanks for your insight.

<<>>

This is EXACTLY the way it is! He's thinking long-term stability is worth short-term separation, but I'm thinking that short-term separation is starting to take a toll. And it bothers me that it continues to be so easy for him. Will it always be easy for him? Will it be easy once we have kids and he's offered a chance to, say, teach abroad for a semester or take a research sabbatical? Will it be easy when a parent needs cared for? I just question what it would take for him to prioritize his personal life.

He'll likely be ready to go on the tenure-track job market in the next year and a half or so. So, theoretically, there may not be too much more of this semester-by-semester change. But my big worry is whether this "short-term" situation will nevertheless become the long-term reality. Does that make sense? I mean, this promise of "short-term" is already four or five years old. It's not really short-term anymore. And every time a new short-term separation looms on the horizon, I feel like it's just building a case for what our life will be like. In that sense, it's not the actual separation that bothers me so much as how I feel like it's just an added indication that this is the way things will be. And as long as we continue to get through the separations like we have, I sense that he feels increasingly comfortable accepting these opportunities. ("Well, I've done this before, and it worked out okay, so why not do it again?")

It's probably true that I support his career in theory more than I appear to support it when things like this come up. I do want him to be happy and successful, but I admit that I could support happiness and success a lot more if it were available in the city we live in! And to answer your other question, he's very attentive when he's away--calls, emails, comes home on as many weekends as he can. Like I said, we're very good at the separations--but that's what worries me. I don't want to be good at them, I don't necessarily want them to be as easy and routine as they've become. I worry that it's becoming a habit for him that will be hard to break the longer it goes on.

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