Weddingbee Blog

Catch up on the entire After “I Do” series here! And if you have a burning question you’d like to see discussed, submit it here!

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How do you balance your career with your SO’s career? If one of you has been offered a position that required significant sacrifice on behalf of the other partner in the relationship, how have you handled it, emotionally/physically?

When I graduated college, I knew Mr. Hyena was going to be continuing his education, and our options were: a) I get a job wherever and we continue our long-distance relationship, or b) I move to College Station to be with him. We’d already been long-distance for four years, and I felt like  if we can’t live in the same city now, then WHEN? So I moved, and I’ll be totally honest—there aren’t many opportunities for my career here, and I can’t wait to move. Mr. Hyena is hoping to get his Ph.D and be done with school forever within the next three years, and then we intend to move to a bigger city. We’re not sure what the game plan will be — whoever gets a job first, that’s where we’ll go? We go where I get a job because it’s my turn to have a career? Whoever gets a better job? — but we both know we’ll have to re-evaluate our situation when the time comes.

Yes, I made the big sacrifice to move to a place where I knew I wouldn’t find my dream job. I don’t know for sure that I won’t have to make another sacrifice when we eventually move. Was it worth it? Will it be worth it in the long run? I’d like to say yes, but I have to figure out how to deal with it all over again, since I was recently laid off from my job. I don’t know what the future holds, but I’m optimistic.

In our household it is pretty easy to check in with each other about our career goals, as we work for the same company and are familiar with the work that we both do. At different times both of us have had job stressors and have maybe not been as happy in our current positions as we would’ve liked to be. Providing an ear and being a sounding board has helped both of us get through those rough patches. We also give each other permission to go and try something new. If Mr P wanted to go back to school to change career paths or advance in his current path, the option is on the table. I was recently offered a development opportunity. The job, however, would impact our transportation to/from work a bit. Mr P and I are a one car house and we carpool to work each day. We discussed ways that we could work with this hurdle. I took the position and we are currently figuring out how to handle it together.

We have a similar dynamic to the Pretzels. We work for the same company and have similar goals and dreams, and we are always available to listen to each other and provide advice. Pursuing advanced degrees has been a source of stress, but also of encouragement, because like I said—we have similar goals and dreams. Like the Pretzels we have also had a few situations in which schedules have changed, impacting our transportation and our mutual schedules. Generally we just ’take the plunge’ and figure out the best solution as we go!

Our careers are very different. I’m Monday - Friday, 8-5. Mr. Gazelle often works 12 hour shifts, either nights or days, and tends to work a lot of weekends. We share a car and we manage to make things work even if some days we only see each other for at most an hour. That being said, we’ve agreed that I’m the one with the lead career. Mr. Gazelle is super supportive of me following my dreams. We’ve talked a lot about career aspirations post wedding and thankfully Mr. G is on board!!

We literally have the same job right now and we’re qualified to do a lot of the same things. I think being supportive when you have the same career is easier, in a lot of ways, while harder in others. It’s easier because we have insider knowledge of the jargon and whatever the other is talking about. We can give more reasoned advice to each other, too, and when we sympathize, it is fully empathetic. Most of the time, I was where he was at some point, and vice-versa. But we’re also close to the same action, so gaining a different perspective on ups and downs of our industry can be difficult.

I actually recommended him for the job we both have now, which was tricky at first. But if you’re same-career sort of people, if you keep it clean at work and let your shiny qualifications speak for themselves, you’ll be fine in the end. It helps that we don’t actually ever need to work with each other.

Since our no-good terrible days don’t usually coincide, we tend to stay understanding and supportive of each others’ professional problems. I think, above all, staying supportive and talking out problems—even if they’re filled with jargon you need explained to you—will help keep you going. Feeling the weight of work in addition to feeling alone is 10 times worse.

Mr. Crepe and I both went to the same undergrad so we’ve learned how to be good at supporting each other in the past. We used to act as assistants on each others’ projects and it worked perfectly. But in the last several years, we’ve honed in on our own individual careers as well as maintained a long distance relationship—as a result, we’re not quite so used to making regular sacrifices for each other anymore. Mr. C doesn’t seem to have much of a problem here but he’s a much more giving person than I am. I’m re-learning to be a better partner and most of the encouragement to change comes from constantly reminding myself that there will be weeks when I’m struggling to meet deadlines and it’ll be his turn to keep house and be my personal cheerleader!

Our careers couldn’t be more different and it’s been a growing experience throughout our 11 (!!) years together. Mr. Ostrich is a copywriter who does most of his work from our home office. I’m a fashion buyer that works in a downtown office. Both of our jobs have their own sets of demands and stresses, but the silver lining is that we love what we do.

But the heavy traveling (8x a year, 1-2 weeks at a time) of my job was the element that put an immediate strain on our relationship. For me, the traveler, I missed Mr. O and my life in SF A LOT. But my 14-hour work days and long work dinners kept me distracted. But for Mr. Ostrich, he was always the one, at home, being left behind. Every 8 weeks, our life was disrupted and just when we were getting back into the groove of things, I had to leave again. And a few times I tried to bring him along, my looong work days didn’t make the trip fun for either of us.

But the work travel was critical to my job that I loved, so we had to figure out a way to make the time apart a positive thing. And after a few trips, Mr. O discovered he could use his solo time to tackle big projects he always wanted to do but claimed he “never had time” because of his job and all the couple  stuff. Then, he started to call up his buddies and they planned man-trips—a road trip to Joshua Tree, hiking in the Sierras, snowboarding in Tahoe. And just like that, the time apart wasn’t a thorn in our sides.

Then came my time to be bold and make some changes in the name of our relationship—because Mr. O deserved to have a partner who wasn’t up in the air all the time. So about 3 years ago, I finally reached a level in my career where I had a team of people to take on some of the travel that I had done. My traveling was reduced to 4x a year and only 3-5 days at a time and it’s been the best thing ever for us.

By leaning on each other and finding a positive light to this obstacle in our relationship, we evolved as a couple. And  inspired to be the best partner to Mr. Ostrich, I was courageous enough to make some drastic changes to my job, which the two of us are grateful for.

Mr. Jaguar and I have complete opposite careers—he is busy working in the Information Technology field, and I’m a Primary School Teacher. We both admit to knowing little-to-nothing about the practical aspects of the others’ field, but we make sure that we’re always available to offload to—even when the little details don’t always make sense!

The hardest part for us was deciding where to live. Mr. Jaguar’s field of work is most common in the busy city centre of Sydney, while I teach out in the Western Suburbs. We compromised by finding a spot sort of in the middle, where he can commute and I can drive to work, wherever it may be. All that might change depending on where I end up teaching in the future, but we’ll make it work!

It’s been a blend. After college graduation, I started graduate school in a different state, while Mr. Dahlia stayed in our college town for a full-time internship. After a year, he moved to be with me and took the first job he could find in that city.

He was miserable, and that made us miserable. Luckily, he was able to find a better, different job in the same city. However, after two years at the job, it was clear that there wasn’t much, if any, room for growth. And I was wrapping up my coursework and heading into dissertation land—so I said that I’d follow him to where he got a job. He ended up with a job in NYC, and during his job search, I applied and got a job as well. (And after a year’s leave of absence, said goodbye to grad school.)

Nick is a lot more generous than I am. Both of us have had opportunities to move elsewhere for work, and have decided to stay put in New York.

However, we are both (for the most part) do our best to be understanding about the other’s work schedule. We each travel a ton for work and have long hours, to the point that we don’t really plan on seeing much of each other during the week. And if there are big opportunities at work (which typically involves more travel), we check with the other person and make sure they are OK with the travel schedule.

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What about you? How do you balance your career with your SO’s career? If one of you has been offered a position that required significant sacrifice on behalf of the other partner in the relationship, how have you handled it, emotionally/physically?