The High Family Costs of Traveling for Work
May 17th, 2012
By Lynne Silva-Breen, MDiv, MA, LMFT, Family Therapy Topic Expert Contributor
With the advent of easy plane travel, many larger businesses have grown to include regional, national, and even international customers or work sites. While our national economy now counts on the companies that make cars, bank, drill, grow, or publish around the world, the people who work at the higher levels of these industries find their jobs are not done just at their desks, no matter how amazingly connected they are electronically. Business relationships, decisions, and inspections can’t be built or done without physically being on-site, and long distance and extended travel are part of the job.
If you are in business or flight school, finishing your MBA, or just dreaming of the day when you or your spouse lands that career-topping “big job,” no doubt you know how hard it will be to work your way to such an important, well paid, and prestigious place in your industry. It’s not everyone who spends up to half their days every month away from home, whether as part of the flight crew or one who loosens their belt while relaxing in business class. You may look upon that lifestyle with envy. Well, don’t. Having worked with dozens of families and couples in Minnesota who have held jobs like this, I can tell you, from their experience, that these jobs can take a very heavy toll on satisfying family relationships. Before you make that big job your goal, I hope you’ll first consider what it can demand from your life.
- Physical toll: Traveling is exhausting no matter what class of seat you have on a plane. When you travel, your body is in a constant state of adjustment to different food, water, accommodations, other people, climate, work expectations, and time zones. Any kind of steady, healthy patterns of sleep, exercise, nutrition, and relationships are interrupted, and it’s rough to try to keep up with good health habits somewhere else.
- Exit/reentry transitions: Life keeps moving on in your home, despite the traveler’s schedule. When you’re trying to pack, with your mind on the journey ahead, the family may feel your absence even while you are still home. Arriving home can be worse, as you’d love to be welcomed home with excitement, while the one who has been at home may want nothing more than to be relieved of the additional responsibilities he or she has shouldered.
- Parenting patterns: When one parent in a family travels for work, the remaining parent has to functionally become a single parent. Leadership around finances, yard work, car repairs, play dates, and school assignments have to shift to the parent “on the ground.” Children can get accustomed to the traveling parent being the “fun” one who comes home with gifts and days off, leaving the at-home parent as the disciplinarian and enforcer who becomes used to making parenting decisions solo.
- Emotional isolation: After spending enough days of the month away from home, it becomes very easy to live two lives: one “on the road” and the other at home. Even with regular phone, text, e-mail, and Skype connections to those at home, the relationships that develop with those who share the travel with you can become more “real” to you than the ones you leave behind. Isolation, prestige, repetition, or intensity of the shared work adds to that other-worldliness. It’s at this level of isolation that I have seen long-term affairs, addictions, mood disorders, and health issues surface. These issues are not easily or often repaired.
Human relationships need physical proximity, regular conversation, shared patterns and caregiving, humor, health, and mutuality to thrive. Trying to have all these and a big traveling job is like trying to juggle three balls when all you’ve ever managed were two. If you are struggling with any or all of these issues as a family or couple, I’ll encourage you to reach out to a family therapist in your area, who can help you manage the human challenges of traveling this much. While it’s not impossible to thrive, it is tough. Best buckle up. The captain has turned on the fasten seat belt sign.
©Copyright 2012 by Lynne Silva-Breen, MDiv, MA, LMFT, therapist in Burnsville, MN. All Rights Reserved.
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Comments
I love it now that we all have face time with our ipods because that gives us a way to keep in real touch even when my husband has to be out of town all the time. There have been times when I know he feels like he misses so much but this allows us to be a little closer than his travel would otherwise allow.
No matter how great it might seem or how much money it offers,no job or title is worth sacrificing your family life and relationships for.Butthis seems to be becoming an old-fashioned idea now and more and more youngsters including my peers consider their jobs and work to be more important than anything else.I guess that is the reason why all kinds of problems including the ones mentioned here are only increasing.
It surprises me that there are still so many companies that require that much actual travel because of the sheer cost that plane tickets, food, etc cost today. Plus add to that that there are far more productive ways that you can meet now. Between video cams and conference calls and webinars, is there really any need to have so many face to face meetings anymore? You would think that for any company looking for ways to cut back on expenses would have to consider this.
We give too little thought to the women (mostly) left at home to do all of the dirty work when their spouses have to travel all the time. I did not sign up to be a single mom, but that’s what this kind of travel by one member of the marriage can cause you to become, and no amount of money will make me accept that.
I have been in this kind marriage before, and believe me, it is tough to maintain a real relationship when one or the other has to travel a lot for their job. My husband and I both had jobs that required a whole lot of travel, and from the evry beginning it became a huge issue for us. It was strange because we had had the very same jobs before we got married, but then it seemed ok, like we loved each other more when we got to come home and be together. But somehow all of that changed when we got married. I suppose that the pressures of having a home kind of did us in, but I think that really we both came to resent one another over things that really were beyond our control if we honestly wanted to keep our jobs. We are separated now and until some of the work travel stops then I don’t think that we will clear this hurdle.
Thanks to you all for your thoughtful comments, each of you reinforcing my experience in trying to help couples sort out the real costs of the Big Job.
I wish that those who think this is the pinnacle of their career would have an honest conversation with those who have held the job before.
There are high human costs to being out of the home for that much time each month, even when there are no children to raise. Adult attachment relationships need proximity, care-giving behaviors, shared experiences and a sense of “team” for them to function as we all hope they will.
I can’t tell you the physical toll that traveling year after year in my job took on me.
I was tired all of the time, irritable, and even when I was at home I know I was so moody that it is not a wonder that my family didn’t really want to spend that time with me.
I missed out on a lot of things that I never can have beack, but it just took me too long to see that what I was working for was actually working against me in the ways that should really matter.
time away, dinners missed, games missed, life with family missed. none of this sounds appealing to me.
There are many families who would jump at the chance to have a great job that paid great money, even if it meant that they had to be away from time to time. If it gives you a way to support your family, then you would have to jump at that opportunity How could you NOT take that job?
I know, ultimately, it is a personal decision. But what would you call excessive travel? 50%? 75%?
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