I goes without saying that when you travel for work 3-4 days a week you miss out on stuff, a lot of stuff. I think Mommy Points covered this topic from the perspective of a spouse with a traveling partner.
When you travel every week, Family / Loved One time tends to gets squeezed into a long weekend, birthdays / holidays can be missed, friends are put at arms length, all this makes sense, your not in the town you “live in” for a majority of the week.
Coming home and experiencing the “transition” period isn’t either on either party. Mrs. Weekly Flyer and I have a pretty good system in place to adjust quickly back into home mode. Un-packing is key to coming home for us. Seeing a suitcase stuffed with a week’s worth of business clothes for 3 days doesn’t help. So it’s on the top of the list when returning home, other than the welcome home dinner (take-out is best even after 4-5 meals on the road) of course.
I agree, that traveling for a living is a tough proposition to put your spouse in, especially one who hasn’t traveled for work. But the other side of the coin (traveling) isn’t all roses all the time. Sure you get fancy dinners, they get old, you pack on pounds on the road. A home cooked meal is on the mind after a few nights out with no end in site. I once ate 4 meals on domestic flights in the span of a few days. Not a good feeling regardless of how good the food is.
A hotel suite upgrade to a huge room by yourself aren’t enough to make up for missing valuable time with family.
But I admit, sometimes the wine is good – really good sometimes. But that doesn’t wash away the time away from your family.
It isn’t a fun time when you find yourself in a small town, working long hours, in a rinky-dink hotel with a late night check-in and an early check-out. Traveling sometimes just reinforces that fact I’m a firm believer in the saying that “absence makes the heart grow fonder.”
Sometimes…I do hate the road when I’m missing home and more importantly, the family.
How do you deal with being away from family and friends on the road? Which is more difficult, the transition back home or the departure on the outbound?
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About The Weekly Flyer
The Weekly Flyer writes about travel from a business traveler perspective. He travels the world every week accumulating points and miles along the way.
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After 8 years I had finally had enough and got taken off the road. I had gotten married because I wanted to know I always had someone to come home to, then when I was actually home for 2 months I realized that I couldn’t really stand him day-in, day-out and got divorced. It’s just so darn hard dating when you can’t see someone for a while and if they have weekend plans already it seemed to span 2 weeks between a first date and second date.
Now I’m off the road and getting stuff in order and it’s so much better. I’d rather travel on my own accord.
Hi Grace, Definitely a transition period when you get off the road.
You don’t need to be a road warrior for work to feel this way. Due to pricing, promos and other factors, even leisure travel can start to feel this way. This weekend will be my first one at home this year and I sure could use it. Even though all my travel is by my own choice.
I will be gone pretty much the whole month of April for work after the 6th, only stopping back once in between all the destinations. When I do this, I realize the suites make me feel worse and more lonely because they are so big! Last year, on my last stop on a stretch like this, I *may have* teared up when they brought a complimentary wine bottle with _two_ wine glasses. (though I did thoroughly enjoy the wine 😛 )
When I meet people at travel conferences, they tend to think I travel all the time as a travel blogger. Actually I don’t consider 10 to 12 weeks a year that much travel. Most travel bloggers I meet are away from home more than 6 months a year.
Many bloggers I meet travel full-time. These are almost always single people. And many bloggers I have spent time with talking about the effect of travel on relationships find frequent travel is hard on relationships. A surprisingly high number of bloggers I meet have just ended a relationship.
I was thinking about writing a piece this week on maintaining a happy relationship while traveling.
Before buying my ticket to Norway last week, I spent a couple hours talking to my wife and family about the trip. These discussions before making a purchase and taking a $1000 to $2000 discretionary trip have caused me to miss out on some mistake fares and low airfare rates in the past.
Keeping stakeholders in my life informed of my travel plans prior to making them keeps home life running smoothly. Kelley and I celebrated our 25th anniversary in January.
Kelley loves to tell me that I have planned her trips to so many places around the world and then cancelled when the airfare deal fell through.
Weekly Flyer, I am so with you. It’s hard to be alone all the time, it’s hard to miss stuff, it’s hard to not be involved at stuff at home in the same level people who don’t travel for a living can be.
And it’s so tough on the spouse at home, and the traveling spouse feels so helpless when there are issues! We are currently doing a renovation, and in January our gas was turned off for three days. That meant no heat or hot water for three days! If we lived anywhere other than Texas my husband would have had to load up the kid and dog and go stay in a hotel. As it was, it was during one of the cold snaps and it was 55 in my house when I got home. Ugh.
People often say to me, you’re so lucky to travel to all of these cool places! But after almost ten years, I wonder how much longer I can do it….