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Maintaining & Strengthening Your
Marriage
While Working -- or Building a Business -- From Home
By: Paula
Dodds
“Love isn’t attaining some ethereal state
of ‘happily ever after.’
It is about going through the good and the
bad, the joyous and the mundane, together.
Love is about remaining there – during the worst of times, the best of times, and – most
importantly – all the times.”
~ Julie Ann Barnhill, ‘Til
Debt Do Us
Part
A typical morning at our house goes a little
something like this:
I get up first and down a quick cup of coffee
while exer-cycling in the basement and watching the
morning news. Then,
I get to grab a quick shower.
Then, I wake my older daughter and husband.
I try to feed Brady while making my
husband’s lunch for work and making sure her
backpack has everything she needs for the morning at
school. Skylar,
my husband, grabs a shower and gets dressed for
work. Then,
I get both of them out the door.
Sky drops Brady off at kindergarten on his
way into work.
After this, I take ten minutes to have a
bagel and skim the morning paper.
By now, I’m on my third or fourth cup of
coffee! Then,
I go into Emma’s room and get her started on her
day. After
we’ve mopped down the table, floor and walls after
her breakfast, she and I head downstairs with a
laundry hamper and a stack of work (and of course,
yet ANOTHER cup of coffee).
I check my email while she settles into her
playroom with her Legos or something else of
interest.
And, it’s only after about an hour and a
half of work, and while I’m running out the door
because I’m going to be late to pick Brady up from
school, that I realize I’ve forgotten to kiss (or
talk to) my husband that day!
Oh yeah…
Remember him?
When
all your time is spent building your business and
raising your kids, where does your spouse fit in?
I
have been very blessed with a husband who is so
supportive of my working from home.
We were both lucky enough to grow up in
one-income households, a rarity even at our age that
only one parent worked.
Our mothers were home to raise us, along with
our siblings, and run the house.
They were responsible for making it a home.
And,
since both of our mothers were at-home moms, it was
figured out early on that I was going to stay at
home with our kids while my husband was left to
“bring home the bacon”
(or at least the majority of the slab).
The problem is that it’s tough to make a
budget work on just one income.
Especially when you figure in credit card
debt and stupid college mistakes that we’re still
paying for!
In balancing my work life and my home life,
which often overlap when working from home, I found
that I was leaving my marriage out of the equation.
Somehow it got put on the back burner so I
could attend to the kids, my classes, my work, the
house, etc., etc., etc…..
It just seemed the easiest thing to subtract
time from because my husband is an adult and “he
can handle it” if we cancel our night out this
week, right?
Wrong!
Not
only did my work begin to suffer, but the kids were
picking up on the tension between my husband and
myself. We
were no longer “nurturing” our relationship like
we needed to. We
were hurting!
We
had to once again make “us” a priority.
Instead of listing my priorities in a set
list… Businesswoman,
Mom, Wife, Woman…
I realized I had to re-prioritize practically
each and every moment of the day.
I was focusing so much on work and then on
the kids, I was neglecting my husband.
And, for his part, Skylar also had to
re-prioritize his wants and needs.
He wanted a wife to cook and clean and wait
on him, but it wasn’t necessarily feasible when
she’s also running her own company and there are
two small children in the household.
But,
we got through it…
We both re-focused and took a long night out
for ourselves to discuss the changes that needed to
be made. And
we made them.
One of the highest stress times in any
relationship, next to a death in the family or one
of you having a serious disease, is starting a
business. It
wears on you. And,
because you’re usually not alone when you choose
to work from home or start a home-based business, it
wears on your family.
And when you and your significant other are
having outside strains in your relationship and you
have kids, they pick up on that.
And it can all be avoided with just a few
pre-emptive moves on your part!
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1.
Make
sure you keep
the lines of communication open with your
significant other so that when you’re feeling
overwhelmed, or when they’re feeling neglected,
you can still talk to and lean on each other!
Set time aside each week for “sharing.”
Make sure that you’re both open during
these times, neither one of you should be
“closed off” to hearing what the other has to
say.
2.
Be
honest with each other!
Don’t lie about having clients or
business when you don’t have any.
Share your triumphs and your
blunders with your spouse.
There’s no shame in saying that you
currently don’t have any money coming in.
With two minds working on how to bring in
more business, you stand a better chance of having
great brainstorming sessions!
“People often lie most readily in marriage.
They know that nothing can kill the fires
of passion quicker than the truth.”
~ Stanley Hauerwas & William Willimon, Resident
Aliens
3.
Be
realistic in your expectations of your spouse.
Don’t expect him or her to pick up all of
your slack. Some
things will have to be left undone.
Sky is very supportive of my working from
home and building a home-based business, but
there’s no way that he’s going to not only be
the only bread-winner (at least in the
beginning!), the housekeeper and the children’s
primary caregiver.
Plus, my companion and confidante.
There’s just no way!
And, on the flip side, he also has to be
realistic in what to expect from me while building
my business. He
can’t expect the house to be perfect (heck, some
days, he’s lucky that it’s still standing when
he gets home!), dinner on the table and the kids
happy and I’m making money.
Life is not that easy!
Do we almost always have a healthy dinner?
Yes. (Occasional
take-out nights are okay.
We figure them into our grocery/food budget
in advance.) Is
the house almost always clean?
Yes. Cluttered,
but clean. And,
are the kids happy?
Yes. The
girls love me being a full-time mom.
They get all the hugs and kisses they want
throughout the day.
Plus, they get away with a lot while I’m
working on the computer and they’re playing in
their adjoining playroom!
“Unrealistic expectations can bring a
plethora of stress-related issues to our
marriages: misunderstandings,
communication breakdowns, distrust, and heated
arguments, to name a few.”
~ Julie Ann Barnhill, ‘Til
Debt Do Us Part
4.
Remember
that the
grass is not always greener on the other side!
Any relationship you’re in is going to
need to be worked at in order to grow.
Keep your relationship a priority.
The top priority?
Not always.
But in the top of your priorities list,
definitely.
5.
Don’t
get set only on building your business or doing
your WAH job.
Re-prioritize
according to your day (or hour, if the kids
are REALLY little!).
6.
Try
to plan a
few fun things each week for the whole family
to do. Then
schedule your work time around that!
7.
Take
time out
of your work and family life to be in a
“couple” with your significant other.
Keep working on your relationship!
“Working at home may be a major change in the
structure of your family.
Don’t assume that everything will be
perfect right from the start.”
~ Cheryl Demas,
The Work-at-Home Mom’s Guide to
Business
8.
Try
to make
friends with other people with similar interests
for get-togethers that can involve the kids, but
also keeps everybody separate.
We get some of our cousins to come over and
“baby-sit” so the adults can sit down and eat
together. And
the kids can all eat together at a separate picnic
table.
This
life as a WAHM is very rewarding.
And, as the old metaphor says, “Behind
every great man is a great woman.” At
our house, it could definitely be changed to,
“Behind every great WAHM is a supportive
husband.”
Copyright
September 2004, Paula Dodds
Paula
Dodds is a devoted WAH wife to her husband Skylar
and mother to her two daughters, Brady, age 5, and
Emma, age 2. She
runs her own Virtual Assistant business, TheVirtualChoice.com;
and she’s also an Independent Consultant for
Kat’s Coffees & More (her sales site is at
TheCoffeeNut.com).
For comments or questions, please email
Paula at Paula@TheVirtualChoice.com. |
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