When you work from home, there are people who may scoff at the idea that you have a ‘career.’ Your spouse may even be one of them. This is a difficult place to be in because you want and need the support of your spouse. Our spouses have a profound impact on our ability to do our job. You may not realize this at first, but try to get some work done the next time the two of you have a disagreement or you feel a certain lack of appreciation – it can make it very hard.
When your husband or your wife doesn’t acknowledge how hard you work or that you work hard at all; when they don’t acknowledge the importance of your job and what you do for a living – then it will impact not only your productivity, but also your emotional state. Don’t get me wrong, this is true whether you work at home or not.
The Drawback of Working At Home
I work out of the house. I have a home office and I log in every morning, sort through my email and then dive into my projects for the day. Writing for families.com is only a small portion of what I do each day. But the drawback of working from home is that my husband’s 9 to 5 job limits what he can or can’t do depending on the situation here; my job offers no such preclusions.
What that means is if there’s an errand to be run, I’m usually the one who does it because
I have more time.
That quote is not entirely accurate. I don’t have ‘more’ time, I have more ‘flexible’ time. I don’t have extra hours in my day, I just happen to spend my day here. That means I take the daughter to school and I pick her up. I run her to all her extracurricular activities. I entertain her friends when they come over after school. I run to the grocery store. I get out the food for dinner. I look after the dogs and in and around all of this, I work 8 to 10 hours a day.
Those are the normal days.
Now, I’m not complaining because this is the choice that I made. What makes it hard sometimes, is the dismissive attitude that I get that because I work at home – then I should ALWAYS have time to do all these things. Now, I can and have done all of the above and more in a single day and still managed to squeeze in my 8 to 10 hours of work. How? Because I’ll get up at 4 a.m. and work for two and half hours before my daughter gets up and I’ll work late after she’s gone to bed.
The problem is – when my husband gets home from work, often he’s ‘done’ for the day. My day doesn’t end. Most days he recognizes this and does his best to take over the ‘home front’ when he gets home in an effort to let me get my work done.
Every once in a while, I find myself wishing I worked in an office and he worked at home – just for a little while – so that my husband could get a taste for just how hard it is to do EVERYTHING and still maintain a career at the same time. But this is the choice that I made and I’d make it again every day – because this allows me to be home with my daughter.
She turns 7 this year and I’ve been home with her from the start and I love it. I love the security it provides her and I love the feeling it gives me to be there for her. I also like being reliable and dependable for my husband. So I’ll keep striving for a balance and I know that he respects my work – just sometimes it doesn’t always feel that way, I remind myself that he’s always supported my desire to work from home and he’s always admitted that it would be harder. I just need to tell him when I need his help – and he’ll be there.
Do you understand?
Related Articles:
Wives Who Work From Home – Yes Honey, I Do Have a Job
Wives Who Work From Home – Bringing Home the Bacon
Wives Who Work From Home – Schedules, Spouses & Stop Signs