Go to email #2, 6:00 minutes in:
Emailer2: A woman writes, "You stress the importance of spending 15 hours a week together. When you are traveling 4 days a week, how is this possible?" http://www.marriagebuilders.com/radio_program/play_segment.cfm?sid=1074

Another radio clip: http://www.marriagebuilders.com/radio_program/play_segment.cfm?sid=1181 "the career should never interfere with your being together every night."


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bump

bumping for longroadback82 and WorkingHard4.

Bump for the hell of it so people remember that a marriage is more important than a job.

Thank you for the "bump" ~ I think a lot of spouses NEED to read it.

I have been through this thread before, but it was time to do it again. Thank you for the Thread-Bump.

I am a pilot. Finding another job that allows our family the level of comfort is not easy. I will say that my job has never come into question as far as an affair is concerned. I text her every time I am on the ground in between flights. When I overnight, I usually don't have time to go out. I have never considered cheating while I am at work. When I do get a decent layover, I let her know where I am and what I am doing if I go out. She can find me or check up on me wherever I am. I have never hidden anything from her regarding my job. As strange as it sounds, everything that has happened has happened while I am at home. I know it shouldn't. I wish I could be at home every night, but due to the job I am unable. I have told her I am on here and that I have posted here, and she is able to come here and see everything. I have nothing to hide from her. I have been selfish in plenty of other areas, but never in regards to my job. I view my job as a means to provide my family the quality of life they deserve.

Like I said, traveling jobs are an invitation to affairs and make recovery of your marriage impossible. They are a disaster to marriages. We have had surgeons and even military personnel find other jobs, you can do that too if you are serious about saving your marriage.

Radio Clip on Overnight Travel

A woman writes that she disagrees with one of Dr. Harley's ideas that traveling overnight with co-workers of the opposite sex should raise red flags. She has traveled overnight for several years with co-workers of the opposite sex and never had any problems. She feels that making a blanket statement like this is ignorant.

The fact that you didn't have an affair while you were traveling is completely beside the point.

Your M is on life support because of your affair. Part of repairing the damage that has been done is #1 - affair proofing your M and #2 building a romantic passionate marriage where you and your W are meeting each other's ENs....which is extremely hard to do when you are spending overnights apart.

If you haven't read all of the basic concepts and watched the infidelity video, I would encourage you to do so...

I'm going to ask this question because I am honestly curious about it and have always wondered what the answer might be. Neither my H nor I travel for work, but I have always wondered.

If married people should never have traveling jobs, or jobs that require them to spend nights apart, then who will perform these jobs? Does no nights apart mean that anyone who chooses to be a doctor, a pilot, a nurse, a police officer, a firefighter, etc. can never get married?

I think most people can agree that all of the above jobs are essential. I don't think any society could ever function if there were no people to perform them. But I'm unclear on how these jobs can be filled if anyone who chooses to pursue one must either 1)Never marry or have a family or 2)Give up their occupation when they decide to marry.

Does Dr. Harley provide any other options? Most of the people I know in the above professions do in fact have families. And most do not choose to give up their careers in these fields as soon as they get married. Some of these careers require extensive training and education and I don't imagine most people who pursue them consider them something they will do only until it is time to start a family.

I'm not asking this question to be argumentative. I really just honestly wonder how this policy works and what it means for such essential professions as health care, law enforcement, etc. and the people who choose to pursue them.

I'll just point out that after the debacle that has been several British Royal Family marriages over the past 40 years, Prince William gave up his helicopter search and rescue job when his son was born. I see that he has looked at the precedents of his parents', and several other marriages, and has decided not to do what they did, but to do what successfully married couples do and live integrated lives.

His wife's father was a pilot, BTW, and gave that up to run a family business.

Dr Harley does not have to provide solutions to the problems of military, oil rig and other jobs. His goal is to help people have successful marriages, and when we look at the statistics for marital breakdown in "night apart" jobs, nobody could deny that these are the riskiest jobs to be in when married. There is only one conclusion to be reached from studying marriages where the job requires people to spend nights apart, and that is that married people should not do them.

Indeed, many people with families who do these jobs are not married, but divorced.

People are free to agree with you, writer, and with the new poster a couple of posts above you, that Dr H's policy is unrealistic and even unnecessary. However, the evidence is clear that we can't do anything other than to advise someone who shows up here to change their job if it involves nights apart. I made my H do that and I have no idea what happened in his organisation after he did - but the organisation still exists and the world hasn't come to an end. I daresay that if the current person doing his old job is married, their marriage is probably in trouble, or soon will be.

Just to make it clear, I wasn't actually stating an opinion on this matter for anyone to agree or disagree with. I was just asking a question, because I honestly didn't understand Dr. Harley's stance on the issue.

But I'm guessing, from your response, his opinion is that anyone who wants to pursue such careers as doctor, pilot, firefighter, police officer, etc. should in fact plan to remain single for their entire lives or plan on only working in their chosen field until such time as they decide to marry and start a family? I actually wasn't sure if that was Dr. Harley's stance on the issue, which is why I asked. I was really just seeking clarification on his views on the subject.

The best way to get his answer on this is to write to him!

True, but it doesn't personally affect me, so I don't know if I'm the right person to ask.

My H and I aren't in professions that require overnights apart. I'm certainly happy about that.

I think most people who travel for work could probably do their jobs without spending nights apart. But there were some jobs, when I thought about it, that I realized simply couldn't be performed only during the daytime. So it made me start to wonder, how should these jobs be filled in a way that has the least destructive of an impact on families? And I wasn't sure what the answer might be.

I think that if these professions were faced with lots of people refusing to do these jobs when married, they would have to change.

I also think that someone who is in the military and knows they will be deployed for months on end has no business getting married. They should not be asking a wife and children to live without them as the norm.

I agree, especially where the military is concerned.

I think this subject interested me because I realized, while going through my mother's illness, that there were a lot of people who were working round the clock, taking care of my mother. And I remember feeling bad, at the time, knowing that if it was 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning and the hospice nurse or the doctor was at the hospital with my mom, they couldn't very well be at home with their own families. But it was also obvious to me that we couldn't have made it through that time without them. My mom required 24/7 care and someone had to be there to do it. I guess I'm just trying to figure out a solution to the problem. How to fill jobs that are absolutely essential and by their very nature, require someone to be there to perform them at all times.

My thought on this is that we are each responsible to set the priorities in our lives. For those who believe that their marriage is a high priority, traveling jobs are out. Now, many people don't put their marriages first. So, there will always be lots of people to take these jobs. It would be wonderful if so many people were to put their marriages first that there would actually be a shortage of people to fill these jobs. It would be a very good thing if that happened. Unfortunately, in this fallen world, I doubt we will ever get to that point.

This made me wonder if there is a distinction between a "traveling job" which requires a person to travel to some location other than the one in which they live and remain gone for at least one or more days, and a job that requires someone to work overnight, even though there may not be any actual traveling involved.

Most of the jobs that I was thinking of that require spouses to be apart overnight - doctor, nurse, firefighter, police officer - don't necessarily involve any traveling. These professions seem to require nights apart because the person performing them actually has to work at night, since it is a profession that requires someone to be performing it 24/7. But they aren't necessarily far away, like they would be with a traveling job.

Does Dr. Harley make a distinction between the two?