Living with a partner who works away

Two weeks on, two weeks off. Monday to Friday in a different city. Six months at sea. Nights, when you work days. Whatever the shape, a partner who works away means you are in a relationship that is part-time in person and full-time in everything else, and most of the advice about couples assumes you are both in the kitchen.

What the pattern does

The person at home runs the house alone. The school, the bins, the boiler, the row with the neighbour, the night the child was sick. They become good at it, because they have to. Then their partner comes home and either tries to take over, which lands as criticism, or does not, which lands as absence.

The person away lives in a narrower world: the job, the digs, the same few faces. They often feel they are missing everything and are told so, and they also feel that nobody at home sees the cost on their side. Working away is lonely, and saying so can sound like a complaint about the family they are doing it for.

Both of you are tired in different ways. Neither of you is in a position to see the other's version from where you stand.

The homecoming is the hard day

Most couples who do this report the same thing: the first day back is the worst. Both of you have built up a picture of the reunion and the real one is a tired person with a bag who wants a shower, meeting another tired person who wants to hand something over. Children are overexcited and then furious. Everyone goes to bed cross.

What helps is to stop expecting the first day to be good. Agree that day one is for landing. No decisions, no "we need to talk about", no sorting out the thing with the car. Sleep, food, the children, bed. The real homecoming happens on day two, and knowing that takes the pressure off day one.

Two lives that join up

The person at home has to build a life that does not stop when the partner leaves. Friends, work, things in the diary. A life on pause is a lonely life, and loneliness turns into resentment faster than most people expect. The trick is to build the life with a place kept in it: the Saturday that is theirs, the friends who know them, the routines they can step into without being briefed.

The person away has to stay in the small stuff. Not the big catch-up call on Sunday, which turns into a report. The photo of the dog. The question about the thing the child said last week. The parents' evening joined on a phone from a car park. Small, frequent and ordinary beats long, rare and important, because the small stuff is where a shared life lives.

Both of you need a fixed rhythm you can plan around. If the pattern keeps changing, nobody can build anything. If it is drifting towards more time away, say so and decide it together rather than letting it happen.

Money, and who decides

Working away often means one of you earns most of the money and the other does most of the unpaid work. That is an arrangement, and it can be a fair one, as long as both of you can see the full finances and both of you have your own money. If the one who is away makes the decisions because they earn, or the one at home makes them because they are there, the other quietly becomes a lodger. Decide the big things together, on day two, not day one.

What this might mean for you

If you recognise the tired homecoming and the two separate lives, you are in the ordinary difficulty of this pattern and the changes above tend to work. If you have noticed that you are relieved when they go, or that they have started extending the away time, or that you have stopped mentioning things because they will not be there anyway, give that some room. The free module Who were you before? asks what the shape of your life has done to you, and it is written for anyone who suspects they have lost track of themselves inside a routine. The article on how to make long distance work covers the relationships where the distance is the whole arrangement rather than a working week.

When this does not apply

Working away can be a job. It can also be a way of not being in a relationship while staying in it, and the person at home often knows which long before they say it. If the away time grows without discussion, if the phone goes unanswered for days, if homecomings are spent on the sofa and leavings are a visible relief, the problem is not logistics. And if the time away is used to check on the person at home, with calls that have to be answered, questions about who was in the house, or a budget that must be accounted for, then the distance is a form of control, and the module When the problem is control is the place to look.

For everyone else: day one is for landing, build a life with a place kept in it, and send the photo of the dog.