Face Off

I have a job which requires me to put in nine hours of face time every day. One of those hours is a lunch hour, which I am careful to take. I also have an hour commute each way, so my time spent at home during the week is limited. I am comfortable with spending nine hours at the office (I consider it to be part of the unspoken expectations for a job at my responsibility level and frankly I’m pleased they don’t ask more of me) but my husband objects to me falling in line with the nine hour requirement – he thinks I should work a strict nine to five day, and that no employer or job deserves more than that if you aren’t getting paid overtime. He sort of has a point.

There is history here, too – I once work a job which paid badly and demanded incessant fifty to 60 hour weeks, which I put in. That plus the commute to that job took a toll on my health and on our relationship, so I can see that my husband doesn’t want that to happen again. His fears are understandable, but from my perspective it’s a little frustrating – can’t he see that I learned my lesson from that other job?

From a practical point of view, there’s not a lot of benefit in it for me to insist with my employer on an eight hour work day. At work I have interesting, rewarding things to do that I get paid well for doing. Coming home earlier would just mean I had more time to do the housework. Sure, theoretically I could use extra time to get more writing done, but in practice my husband and I are both such neat freaks that I’d feel too guilty to be able to sit down and write while the house was a mess, so the housework would come first, and housework is such a time suck – there’s always more to be done – that I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to carve out any more writing time than I’ve currently got.

But, you say, this is a dire viewpoint. Maybe my husband just wants to spend more time with his wife. To which I reply, that may well be true – and I’d definitely like to spend more time with him – but my husband, in addition to working full time, is in school half time and plays in a band. Of the two of us, I spend a lot more time at home than he does. And if I can deal with not seeing him as much as I’d like because of his obligations, why won’t he cut me some slack for my work obligations? It’s my career, I’m passionate about my field, I enjoy it, I’m ambitious. And as long as I’m able to maintain a good life-work balance, I think it’s okay to choose to spend 45 hours a week in the office instead of putting up a fight for 40.

So far, though, I’ve been unable to convince my husband of this, which makes me wonder if I am just completely off base. I also don’t know anyone else with this problem, so that’s hard too – I have no model to follow. I guess I’ll just continue to muddle through as best I can – which is what we all spend life doing, so I’m in good company there.