Setting boundaries at work
April 27, 2015 2:07 PM   Subscribe

Please help me think about how to set boundaries in my demanding job, before it damages my marriage even more. 

I have been at a demanding job for about 4 years. The hours are unpredictable and I'm expected to be checking my email regularly and responding to requests from my supervisors, including on evenings and weekends.

I have trouble convincing myself that I am entitled to set boundaries, and my wife is at her wits' end with the patterns I've established. I will frequently become absorbed in a task that has come in the evening or on the weekend to the exclusion of spending time with her or helping cook or otherwise maintain our relationship and household. I understand why this is so frustrating for her because sometimes I'm present and sometimes I'm not and she can't know when she can rely on me.

I struggle with saying no to work emails--e.g., are you available for a conference call at 3 pm on a a Sunday? (with half an hour's notice) If we're out of the house, then I clearly can't do anything about it, but if we're at home, I feel like I can't say no when if I were asked why I can't do it the answer would be "I'm at home and physically could but I'm choosing to allocate this time to being at home and present with my wife." It's some combination of feeling like I don't deserve to say and would be illegitimate to say. (I should note that no one at work would actually ask me why I was unavailable (they wouldn't probe), so this is just in my head, and if for example the answer was "I have to pick up my kid" I would feel like that was legitimate. We don't have kids.) I'm salaried so I don't get paid more for working more, but I am well paid so I have trouble shaking the feeling like they're buying my whole weekends and evenings. My supervisors do say they're unavailable sometimes but I don't feel able to talk to them about this because I feel like I'd just be asking for permission to slack off. 

Partly I feel like I can't ever beg off like that unless I'm confident that as a general matter I'm giving everything I can to the job. But I'm extremely self-critical and never, ever feel like I'm doing adequately, even when I get good feedback. I feel like the answer for what's okay at work is probably something like "it's okay to do it sometimes, but don't establish a pattern of not being available."

That's tough because what I think my wife wants from me is exactly to establish a pattern of saying no, i.e., setting boundaries. Not establishing an expection that I will always be available. 

If it's not obvious, this is causing a lot of conflict between me and my wife because my behavior says to her I value work more than her. I think what's happening is I'm used to telling her "I can't go for a walk now, or help with dinner, because I'm working", and I'm not used to telling work no. People at work will always say something is urgent, so when presented with that or relax with her, I find it very difficult to pick the latter. 

The result is that she feels I never make the choice to be with her.

I guess what I need help with is believing that I'm entitled to say I'm not available for something at work if the reason isn't a concrete "have to be somewhere else" commitment but just the need to spend some time maintaining my relationship, and on a regular basis. 

I also am looking for concrete strategies about how to set boundaries, communicate them, decide in advance what I can and can't do. And also how to explain to my wife when I do need to spend all day on a Sunday working. (I feel like that won't be okay until I've built up her trust that I've tried to set appropriate boundaries.)

I've been saying I'm going to seek therapy for a while and I'm promising myself I'm going to start making calls tomorrow. I hope the feelings of not deserving to take care of myself and my family are something that I could work on in therapy. 

Thanks for any helpful thoughts, folks. Things have been bad for a while but I'm trying to figure out what I need to start fixing how I approach these things. 
posted by anonymous to Human Relations (41 answers total) 15 users marked this as a favorite
 
48. Married. We both have jobs and one daughter. One thing I would like you to try is to experiment with working a bit less. See what happens if you just don't read email AT ALL on a Sunday. Give the Sundays to your wife and social life. It's quite common for me to work too obsessed when I start a new job, but I try to experiment with doing less and the results are usually the opposite of what you are thinking would happen; you gain respect from supervisors and co-workers BECAUSE you have a life. The adequacy thing is very familiar. Probably something you can work on in therapy. Good luck!
posted by hz37 at 2:16 PM on April 27, 2015 [6 favorites]


It sounds like you have a really good handle on the situation and what you need to do: say no to work more often. One thing I do to carve boundaries about my personal life away from my job is to block out time that is just for work and time that is just for my personal life. If work intrudes into Personal Life time, too damn bad--I'll only wear myself out more and be less efficient during the next Work block if I deal with it, so it can wait until it's Work time again. It's not me making a conscious decision, it's the RULES. That makes me feel less bad about saying "sorry, nope! can't deal with this now." If you know you DO need to spend a Sunday working, that can go in your schedule as Work time.

Google Calendar is your friend, here. It might help you to physically block out Personal Life time on a calendar, time when Work is not allowed to intrude, and vice versa.
posted by sciatrix at 2:16 PM on April 27, 2015 [4 favorites]


Can you explain why you don't feel that the need to spend time with your wife is ITSELF a "concrete have-to-be-somewhere-else commitment"?

It sounds like it qualifies to me - there's a concrete need for you to do it, and you have to be somewhere other than the office to so it. That sounds like a "concrete need to be somewhere else."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:18 PM on April 27, 2015 [24 favorites]


Surprisingly to me, our CEO (of a smallish company) simply doesn't pick up his phone or respond to emails at the weekend.
Taking his cue, if I receive a work email or call at the weekend, I just don't answer it until Monday.

(Edit: I forgot to add that I felt the same way, until realizing that by his setting a cue, I could let myself of the hook.)
posted by blue_wardrobe at 2:21 PM on April 27, 2015 [8 favorites]


First, I know exactly where you're coming from and have struggled with this in my work and relationship with my husband.

I struggle with saying no to work emails--e.g., are you available for a conference call at 3 pm on a a Sunday? (with half an hour's notice) If we're out of the house, then I clearly can't do anything about it, but if we're at home, I feel like I can't say no when if I were asked why I can't do it the answer would be "I'm at home and physically could but I'm choosing to allocate this time to being at home and present with my wife."

The correct response is, "I have another obligation at that time." It's nobody's business what your obligation is.

It may help you to work with your wife to find certain blocks of time, or amounts of time, that she expects to you to be "off" from work no matter what, so that you have a firm idea what your obligations at home are, and can thus respond to work requests appropriately.

I feel like the answer for what's okay at work is probably something like "it's okay to do it sometimes, but don't establish a pattern of not being available."

I feel like the answer is probably also, "Take the time you need to care for yourself and your family so you don't burn out and turn into a basket case who can't accomplish anything at work." Because that's where you're headed. Work wants you to be successful. Working all the time with no downtime is not sustainable, and it will catch up with you one way or another. Being unable to carve out personal time for yourself might also be a danger sign for the company. Yeah, they want you to deal with this urgent thing right now, but you may be undermining yourself in their eyes by never standing up for yourself and your personal time.

Partly I feel like I can't ever beg off like that unless I'm confident that as a general matter I'm giving everything I can to the job. But I'm extremely self-critical and never, ever feel like I'm doing adequately, even when I get good feedback.

You have your finger on the problem here. That suggests that you're already moving toward a solution.

I've been saying I'm going to seek therapy for a while and I'm promising myself I'm going to start making calls tomorrow.

Stop whatever you're doing right now and make one (only one is okay) call today.

It's going to be conquering the emotional side of this, not just finding a clever strategy, that is going to solve this problem.
posted by BrashTech at 2:21 PM on April 27, 2015 [19 favorites]


One possibility is to sit down with your wife and have her input on what sorts of work boundaries might be appropriate. Perhaps she has some good ideas. This request will also communicate to her that you really are trying to set boundaries, and that you value her help; you are taking her needs seriously.

It's totally fine to try and set boundaries on your own, but if your wife is already good at doing that in her life, why not let her help you? My guess is she will take well to this request for concrete help. Particularly if the main reason you're trying to set boundaries is because of her complaints, if you involve her, you won't have to worry about whether you've set your boundaries too tight or loose—you'll hopefully feel confident that you've set boundaries that are appropriate for both of you and your marriage.
posted by Clotilde at 2:24 PM on April 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


Your actions are reminiscent of my Father working in the Bank during the 1980’s recession in England. He HAD to make himself present for work all the time, or else lose his job. This took its toll on his marriage to my Mum who was looking after 2 young children on her own and felt abandoned, neglected and never his first choice. Are you worried that if you don’t “make yourself available” that you’ll lose your job, because in this day and age surely you don’t need to be available for work 100% of the time? (I appreciate you don’t list what kind of job it is or where you live so I could well be wrong).

Yes, you should go for Therapy. You really do sound as though you are having a hard time switching off… you sound scared for some reason. It’s OK to have a weekend. It’s OK to take time off. It’s OK to not be available for a 3pm Sunday Conference Call even if you’re totally available.

How to do this? Well – you just tell them no, I’m not available. No excuses, no further words, just saying no is OK. Even the top dogs of the biggest companies in the world take vacations and the companies don’t fall apart.

So yes, go to Therapy but also, as a compromise, you could try allocating specific work “time” during weekends and evenings. Say – Saturday morning from 8am – 10am you’re allowed to check work emails. Then, you shouldn’t be checking work emails again until 4pm in the afternoon for example. Create your own Work away from Work schedule. This will at least help you carve out some quality time with your wife I hope. Otherwise, I fear you’ll go the same way as my parents did – divorce!
posted by JenThePro at 2:24 PM on April 27, 2015


What would happen if you just stopped looking at your phone/email at all during evenings and weekends. Give your job 100% during regular business hours, then just stop participating when you're at home. Who says your job gets to own your life?
posted by latkes at 2:27 PM on April 27, 2015 [7 favorites]


No need to divorce your wife -- she'll take care of that for you as long as you think it's okay for work to disrupt your weekend with half an hour's notice.

If you're an ER doc, that's a different convo. But if cubicles and/or widgets are involved, your wife is a million percent right.
posted by sageleaf at 2:30 PM on April 27, 2015 [33 favorites]


I was in a similar job for a while. I find jbenben's answer massively uncharitable. I eventually found a new job with less-demanding hours, but I think I managed the busy job's schedule better than most. Here are some things that helped me:

-Communicating clearly with my wife as much as I knew about upcoming demands on my schedule as far in advance as possible. For my gig, short-notice travel was a common hassle, and I would shoot her an email as soon as I could; "Have to be in Houston for a Thursday meeting; hope to be home Thursday night but it may bleed into Friday. Home late Friday at the latest." or "May need to field calls sometime Sunday afternoon; deal is blowing up." If we both know work is coming we can both prepare for it.

-Not giving reasons when I said certain times/days didn't work for calls or meetings, and not apologizing for the same. Just "Can only do a call Sunday before 9am or between 8p and 9p." People will deal.

-Establishing an expectation within the office that I may not be available outside of office hours. This may be a little idiosyncratic to help you, but I enjoy lots of outdoor sports that take me away from cell phone reception, and my coworkers knew this. That made it unremarkable if I didn't respond to an email until the end of the day.

-Only checking work emails once per night on weeknights and twice per day on weekends. On weeknights I would leave the office whenever I could leave, go home, have dinner with my wife, and hang out with her for a while. Before I went to bed, I would check work email again to see if anything blew up in the intervening few hours that needed my immediate attention. If yes, I attended to it, if no, I DID NOT RESPOND TO NON-CRITICAL MATTERS and left them for the following morning. That helped reinforce to those I worked with that I would attend to matters promptly, but not necessarily out of working hours.

-On a related point, I got good at distinguishing what was on fire and needed to be attended to outside of working hours, and what could wait until morning. And I only did the on-fire stuff outside of working hours. No exceptions. I also managed my own time/workload so that non-time-sensitive stuff didn't become time sensitive because it sat on my desk for so long.

-I planned things with my wife so that I did have concrete reasons to say no to work, even if they were only reasons I gave myself (because like your co-workers, mine rarely pushed and asked why I couldn't make x date/time work).

Finally, it was not feasible for me to only field calls and emails during work hours and perform well at my job. Take a close look at yours; if ignoring calls/emails outside of work hours wouldn't hamstring your performance, do that (I do it at my current job). But if it isn't an option, try the tips above.
posted by craven_morhead at 2:32 PM on April 27, 2015 [43 favorites]


this is causing a lot of conflict between me and my wife because my behavior says to her I value work more than her.

You do value your work me than her. If you didn't, you'd show her that with your actions. You would begin right this minute by making plans to intentionally get out of the house with her more, since you said you can say no to work when you're out. You would continue tonight by looking up a therapist who does CBT (and is in your insurance network, if applicable). Since there are usually plenty of those, you would find plenty to call, and keep calling, until you find one who can give you an appointment. Then you would keep the appointment, because "I have a medical appointment" is clearly a legitimate reason to say no to work. Right?
posted by zennie at 2:35 PM on April 27, 2015 [16 favorites]


Oh, one other thing. I had work email notifications setup on my phone, like you probably do. I basically have no ability to ignore the little "new mail" notification icon, and when I was traveling during the week I needed my phone to tell me that I had new mail. But it meant I found myself checking work email more than I'd like to on off hours. Then I noticed that in my Android mail app, I could tell it how often to check for new mail, and change how often it checked for new mail based on the day and time. Ignoring work email was much easier when my phone didn't give me new mail notifications during off hours, and I had to check for new mail manually.
posted by craven_morhead at 2:46 PM on April 27, 2015 [5 favorites]


I feel like the answer for what's okay at work is probably something like "it's okay to do it sometimes, but don't establish a pattern of not being available."

Substitute "what's okay in a relationship" in the sentence above and you have most of the answer to your question, honestly.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 2:52 PM on April 27, 2015 [8 favorites]


Ignoring work email was much easier when my phone didn't give me new mail notifications during off hours, and I had to check for new mail manually.

Similarly, on my iPhone I turned of Badge notifications for my work email account. The emails are still there if I want them, but they don't make the number on the badge increment (I practice inbox zero on my personal email, so if there's any number on the badge it means I have a new PERSONAL email). Also, on weekends or other times when I don't want to be bothered with work stuff, I manually switch the mail client to only view my personal inbox. Again, work email is still available, but it's at least a couple of extra taps away — a disincentive and reminder that I shouldn't be looking at that unless it's really important. When I go on vacation, I actually remove my work accounts from my phone.

but I am well paid so I have trouble shaking the feeling like they're buying my whole weekends and evenings.

Interestingly (and if you asked my employer this might be more of a bad thing than a good thing), the more I get paid and the more senior I have become in my career, the more I feel like I can set boundaries. As a junior developer, I needed to prove myself and was available around the clock (it helped that I was also very young and single at that point). As a director, I happily reject meeting requests outside of my working hours unless it's something truly extraordinary, I look at work email maybe once or twice over a weekend (sometimes not at all), and I freely will come in late or leave early if I need to handle something personal (assuming my work is still getting done, and I'm not missing important meetings during business hours). IMHO this is one of the privileges I get from working my ass off to become a senior professional. I'm trusted to have the judgement to get my job done, and I am given the flexibility to handle my workload the way I want to. Since I don't abuse that trust, it's all good. If I say I can't make a meeting, my bosses and co-workers are completely accepting. Because they know that I am responsible, get my stuff done, and am available if a true emergency happens.
posted by primethyme at 2:54 PM on April 27, 2015 [5 favorites]


I guess what I need help with is believing that I'm entitled to say I'm not available for something at work if the reason isn't a concrete "have to be somewhere else" commitment but just the need to spend some time maintaining my relationship, and on a regular basis.

The advice above to start small is a sound. Blocking out Sundays would be a good start. One day a week to attend to Real Life (as opposed to work stuff) is the least you can offer yourself. You need it for family, home stuff, church, or all of the above. Block it out on the calendar, mark yourself busy, turn off the phone and hide it in the drawer until Monday AM.

I'm willing to bet that the place won't have burnt to the ground. I'd also be willing to bet there's precedent. Have they ever had trouble reaching other folks during these time slots? Probably because they're unplugged.

And if it has burnt to the ground, and somehow you've been made the critical pathway through which everything must pass (or else chaos), then there has been a significant failure in management at your company, and I'd advise working to change this (with a weekend on-call rotation schedule of some kind, where you're on for one and off for three, etc.) or finding a more humane place to work. No well-run organization should put itself at risk by funneling all of its bullshit through a single person. You're an agreeable, can-do sort of person which is great, but to hell with being taken for granted like that.
posted by jquinby at 3:18 PM on April 27, 2015 [12 favorites]


If I were your wife, and you were my partner, I would want you to consider looking for a new job where the work-life balance is way, way better. Would you be open to doing that for your family and for yourself?
posted by Hermione Granger at 3:23 PM on April 27, 2015 [7 favorites]


Look at the worst case scenarios:
A. You set boundaries and they fire you. (Do you really want to work at a place like that?!)
B. You don't set boundaries and your wife divorces you.

Read through "Your Money or Your Life". This is an early retirement extreme type book, which you can take or leave, but it did a good job of grinding in the message "you are worthy and your time is valuable". I do ZERO work after 4pm and ZERO on weekends and feel ZERO guilt. This is my life - I will spend some of it helping out in exchange for money because money is handy. The more money I can make the better, because that hour I'm working is time I'm not spending doing any number of other more fun things - including spending time with my spouse. I definitely do not work overtime (rarely, and when I'm offered time and half or double time - yes, I have an office job!). Mostly I want to spend all my time hanging out with my husband, son, and cats because they're fun and awesome. You only get to do this life once!

You are inherently valuable. It is not up to work to decide your value.
(fwiw, I would not put up with this from my spouse for more than a week or two!)
posted by jrobin276 at 3:29 PM on April 27, 2015 [6 favorites]


"We don't have kids.) I'm salaried so I don't get paid more for working more, but I am well paid so I have trouble shaking the feeling like they're buying my whole weekends and evenings. My supervisors do say they're unavailable sometimes but I don't feel able to talk to them about this because I feel like I'd just be asking for permission to slack off. "

Also, man, not working 7 days a week is hardly slacking off.
posted by jquinby at 3:29 PM on April 27, 2015 [6 favorites]


You've trained you work to consider you 100% available all the time. Now you have to train them out of that. There's nothing wrong with asserting work/life balance and better companies want that because they know that their employees perform best with rest and healthy relationships outside of their work lives. Working 24/7 is a recipe for burnout and personal life catastrophe, both of which will hurt the company in the long run. Turn off your phone notifications. Schedule very limited check-in times outside of work if you must, and block-off entire days where you're not available. The weekends and vacations are a good starting point for that.

Businesses were successful and thrived before we were all tethered to devices that allowed instant communication. Your job will not fall apart if you step away from your device. Train your colleagues and supervisors to not expect instant responses and, if you're asked to do things outside of your regular workday hours, use the phrase, "I'm unavailable, I have a prior commitment" liberally. Do not offer details about why you're busy and what you're doing. It's totally unnecessary and unprofessional.

Boundaries can be hard to stick with, but you're at a critical juncture right now. If you don't figure out how to make your life with your wife a priority over work, you will lose your wife.
posted by quince at 3:35 PM on April 27, 2015 [4 favorites]


When you say "well paid", how much time do you spend dealing with email and such over 40 hours a week? If you look at that time as time and a half, does it still look well paid to you?

Where I work, we have people who are on call in case stuff breaks. They set their schedules months out. Until recently, they carried pagers, and now they carry cell phones running the "Pager Duty" app which can notify them when they're needed (no time spent checking email), and roll over if they don't acknowledge the alerts in some time.

At the very least, you need a system where you're not checking email, where it's clear when you're expected to be around and when you're not, who the on-call status rolls over to, and what the response time is on those times when you're on call.

Because it sounds to me like you work 40 hours, and are on-call another 128 hours. So that's 40 hours at your base rate, and 128 hours at time and a half. What does your hourly rate look like if you divide a week's salary by 232?

If it's still good, then put some hard savings limits in place and talk with your wife about retiring. If it's not so good, then either insist on an on-call schedule and procedures, or quit.
posted by straw at 3:37 PM on April 27, 2015 [3 favorites]


Saying "no" to working feels mean, and I am bad at it, so one thing that tends to help me is structuring my away-from-work time so I don't have to say no. In my case, this means not looking at my work email when I don't want to do work. This may also mean physically turning off your phone (or putting it on silent) if you get phone calls a lot.

I know the feeling where you can say, "I'm unavailable Sunday", and then they'll still email you on Sunday. But they'll soon stop if you don't respond to your email and then on Monday send something saying, "sorry, didn't see this yesterday, I was away from my email." This is (in my experience) much easier to pull off than saying, "no, I can't do that right now."
posted by goingonit at 3:38 PM on April 27, 2015


I work evenings and weekends from time to time, but I notify my spouse at least a day in advance so that he can plan his schedule around it. I don't tell him 30 minutes prior that I will need to work, or just silently start working in the evening without telling him. It is different than plans with friends or hobbies, because my partner can opt to join me on those if he wants to, or can point out that it's more important that I wash the car than it is to have lunch out. Work is different - my partner can't join in, and he would feel uncomfortable telling me that my work obligation was less important than home obligations.

This is very astute:
I understand why this is so frustrating for her because sometimes I'm present and sometimes I'm not and she can't know when she can rely on me.
Give your wife the tools she needs so that she knows when you'll be "present" and when you won't be. If the expectation is that you will be working evening and weekends, then schedule work hours on evenings and weekends. Set up a home office that you work from. If nothing comes up during that time, great! Outside those hours, you are Not Working. I think this will also help clarify for you how many extra hours you're working, and if you're really getting compensated well enough.
posted by muddgirl at 3:58 PM on April 27, 2015 [3 favorites]


Even my most workaholic CEO boss who answered emails at 4AM and now runs a publicly traded company had an absolute moratorium on checking his work email (or doing any work stuff) until mid-afternoon on Sundays.

I think your boundaries have to start with carving out time when you Will Not check your work email.
posted by deludingmyself at 4:00 PM on April 27, 2015


Maybe consider setting up an "out-of-office" notice for the weekends between that says something like, "I'm currently away from my desk and don't have access to email or voicemail; I will return your message on Monday at 9am. Thank you."

That way you are "responding" and people know when they can expect to hear back from you. It might take some of the pressure to respond off.
posted by brookeb at 4:01 PM on April 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


I have trouble convincing myself that I am entitled to set boundaries

You're actually really good at setting boundaries and saying no. You do it to your wife all the time.

Ok, I know that was really harsh, but you can't really blame her for feeling like you put your work first when you feel that spending time with her is not a legitimate use of your waking hours.

I am so happy to hear that you are considering therapy, because from one perfectionist to another: that's the only thing that has ever helped me. Therapy and medications. I would have never crawled out of that work-hole without them.
posted by chainsofreedom at 4:28 PM on April 27, 2015 [24 favorites]


So my husband and I both have lived this way and I've been in both positions.

Here's my magic trick: send email to the 2-3 people who need to know on Thursday and say "heads up guys, I will be absolutely unavailable Sunday 11-3 this weekend. Here's what to do during that time..."

Then you take that 4 hours (take 2 to start if this feels too high-wire) and tell your wife on Thursday "I told work I'm not available these hours."

Do that, rotating between Sat and Sun and different hours, for a couple of months. Eventually both you and your team will have worked out how to make weekends a bit more sane, and they will have figured out how to handle emergencies, and/or they will have managed to hunt you down once or twice and you will now know what a true emergency is.

I used to think my husband thought less of me than his job and then I got into a 24/7 role. You are totally right that you need boundaries, but I totally know now that it is not an indicator of love, it's about emergencies and heroism and fear and culture all mixed up together. But it is a sacred duty for us all (I believe) to set those boundaries, or else what are we working for?
posted by warriorqueen at 4:39 PM on April 27, 2015 [9 favorites]


I work at a professional services firm that has similar demands on employees' time so I really sympathize with your situation--while the last-minute client requests are inconvenient for the single 20-somethings in the office, I imagine they are far more aggravating for the folks with spouses and children. Some of the suggestions I'm seeing in the responses would absolutely not fly at my company (not checking email over the weekend, particularly during busy times, is literally unheard of--even for the most junior employees).

In some ways this may be an issue with differing cultures across workplaces and industries. I don't know what what kind of environment you work in--maybe at your office, there are plenty of people who don't check work email over the weekend or never log in remotely late nights to do work. That's for you to scope out and make with that info what you will. Maybe that kind of system can work for you without compromising your standing at work.

I would suggest some combo of the following:

Leaving work on weeknights "early" (at my firm this is 6pm or so) to go home for dinner with the family and logging back on later in the evening to check on any requests.

Setting clear expectations with your wife ahead of time: if you anticipate a busy week or two, let her know that you are going to have to work at moment's notice, but make it up to her during less busy times by actively scheduling time together.

Nth-ing the calls to communicate plans with your team (do you work closely with others?)--if you have tickets to a show or even if you just have plans to host a casual dinner at home with friends, let your team know well in advance that you are out of commission during those times. You don't necessarily owe it to your coworkers to make it clear each time why you're not going to be available, but some of these suggestions to just say you aren't available weekend after weekend during huge stretches of time make me really nervous; at least in my company, we tend to block off time as an exception and not as a rule.

Really take advantage of the times when you aren't busy. I was guilty when I first started working of feeling like I had to work non-stop all the time, but I realized a more sustainable lifestyle is to accept that there will be weeks (or even months) when I will actually have to work around the clock--and when I'm not so busy, I try to make as many plans as possible, catch up with friends, etc.
posted by leftshark at 4:46 PM on April 27, 2015 [5 favorites]


Setting expectations is important and you've been a pushover long enough that it's exactly why they try to do conference calls with you on Sunday afternoon. If they email you at 2:30 pm on a Sunday to do a call and you don't respond, they will assume you are busy because, well, it's Sunday and you have other shit to do in your life. If they start to think you actually have a life on the weekends, they will try harder to get shit done during the week.

I have a problem too where it's hard to "unsee" or "unknow" a work request and once I get it, I have to respond and deal with it, or it looms over me. In a particularly stressful time, my solution was to start unsyncing my work email during family time. Out of sight, out of mind. If they email you at 2:30 pm on a Sunday, but you are scrapbooking with your wife, you aren't going to see it because you have turned off work email updates until you are available to do work. At 5 pm, when you and your wife have finished up and you're free, you can refresh the inbox and see if there's anything you need to do. Since the problem was my urge to deal with information coming in about work, the solution was to shield myself from getting information about work until I was ready to deal with it. You'll still be available and doing work as it comes in, but you won't be interrupting family time by living life like you are on call 24/7.

I don't think you need to come up with valid excuses, "Oh, we went skiing and I was on the slopes when you emailed" and I don't think you need to warn them, "Hey, I won't be answering work emailed from 1 pm to 5 pm on Sunday." I think you need to just do it -- email them 3 hours later instead of 3 minutes later, and they will get over it. Don't apologize and don't beg for permission beforehand. Your bosses do this 24/7 crap because you have let them, and if you didn't, they would only do it when something is actually urgent and important.

I think your wife is being reasonable. You admit you choose work over her all the time. Unless you get a handle on your work expectations, or find a new job, this sounds like it's going to destroy your marriage. Your career is important too, obviously, but it's a job, not indentured servitude. I know many people who are paid very well not because they are on call 24/7, but because they are good at what they do and when they do work, they kick ass. When shit hits the fan and they need to put in the hours, they will, but their salary is for their skills, judgement, and proven success. Whatever your salary is, they don't pay for the right to control you and run your entire life.
posted by AppleTurnover at 5:20 PM on April 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


> The hours are unpredictable and I'm expected to be checking my email regularly and responding to requests from my supervisors, including on evenings and weekends.

This is your first encroachment on your life, and where you need to start. Does your group have and use a work calendar? The rest of my comment assumes you do.

An old trick for keeping people from scheduling meetings at times that theoretically could work, but are awful on everyone, (like at 8:30AM, when people officially start at 9,) is to put time you need on your calendar as an explicit event. When anyone would want to plan a meeting, before 9:30AM just isn't an option because I already have an event there titled (invisibly to them) "morning coffee and email and catching up with today's to-do list and general sanity recentering time".

Stop checking email when you don't want to. Fill your schedule with your personal events that exclude you from being called upon when you mustn't be. Make your off hours visible events in their lives, so you don't have to explain. Make that, e.g., four hour block explicit.

They pushed work into your personal space. The best way out is probably to push your personal space to work. When your scheduled offline times are visible, they might be sad they are not getting two workers for the price of one any more, but it has to end somehow. You're choosing the least bloody way.
posted by cmiller at 5:23 PM on April 27, 2015 [4 favorites]


my behavior says to her I value work more than her. I think what's happening is I'm used to telling her "I can't go for a walk now, or help with dinner, because I'm working", and I'm not used to telling work no. People at work will always say something is urgent, so when presented with that or relax with her, I find it very difficult to pick the latter.

So work = important and relaxing with wife = unimportant. That's what she's seeing because that's what you're acting out. Sundays - absolutely no-go to your work. If you can't allocate one day per week just to your life with her then you're in trouble. So specify a cut-off time to your boss (I won't be available after 7pm, say) and at least one day at the weekend and stick to it. My husband loved his job and worked all hours and I understood and I understood and then I felt neglected and then someone else made me his priority and now my husband and I are separated. Seriously, you'd fight tooth and nail if you thought your job was under threat, right? Well your marriage is. You need to fight for that harder if you want it more than your job. Your boss isn't the one taking care of you when you're sick or comforting you when you're upset. Agree a realistic work schedule with your wife that she can live with and turn your phone/email off the rest of the time. Please.
posted by outoftime at 5:26 PM on April 27, 2015 [3 favorites]


I really don't like having stuff hanging over my head, which makes me pretty bad at relaxing when I know there's work to do, much to the dismay of my SO.

One thing that helps me, that sounds kind of insane now I write it out, is reframing relaxing as a priority item on my to-do list. So I think, nope, can't proofread now since I've scheduled a game of Scrabble. Or I tell work that I'm sorry but I'm not going to respond to email today since I have a prior commitment--they don't have to know that the prior commitment is going for a walk in the park with my SO. If I frame relaxing that way, I give myself a justification not to respond to work, since I am "working" on something else.

Good luck; I know it's hard.
posted by ferret branca at 6:01 PM on April 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


Having been in a job that required this kind of 24-7 availability, I think craven_morhead has some great suggestions. A couple of other things:

- Think of your wife as a client. If you had a meeting scheduled with a client, you wouldn't think of checking emails during that time, or scheduling something else at the same time. I found that, in my job with a similar schedule, being constantly available also gives you a certain amount of flexibility. At any given time, you could be on an important call, so nobody questions you much about why you have a conflict. Use this flexibility to have non-negotiable time with your wife where you give her your full attention just like you would with a client.

- Consider your work culture. Is it you, or is it them? What I mean is, do other people make time for their families and other priorities that sometimes come before work, or is it expected that everyone will treat work as their #1 priority all the time? When you send an email at 3 a.m., do you expect to receive a response before 8? If you're behaving like this because your work culture demands it, and not because you're simply caught up in an endless cycle of working and being successful and meeting expectations and feeling important, then you may not be able to fix it without looking for a new job.

(Also, feel free to memail me if you want to talk more, because your question sounds so much like what I went through -- not so much the marriage stuff as being so self-critical, never feeling like I'm doing enough, struggling with setting boundaries. What I learned was that even when I set boundaries very forcefully, they were ignored. So there may be more to it than just learning to set boundaries.)
posted by chickenmagazine at 7:28 PM on April 27, 2015 [3 favorites]


Could you start by picking one day of each weekend, either Saturdays or Sundays, to be "no work e-mail" day, meaning that if someone from work asked you to dial into a conference call, you wouldn't even see the request and thus wouldn't be tempted to do it? One day completely off of work each weekend might make your wife happier, or at least it might be a good start and a way to start moving towards no work e-mails on Saturdays OR Sundays.
posted by sunflower16 at 8:37 PM on April 27, 2015


Partly I feel like I can't ever beg off like that unless I'm confident that as a general matter I'm giving everything I can to the job.

This is crap and you would understand it is crap if you were being paid hourly. Are you being paid twice as much as you would be if you were paid hourly? No? Then don't give them twice as much of your time.

Also, giving in to the idea that only people with children deserve to have a life outside of work is bullshit and makes it harder for everyone, with or without children. Don't do this.
posted by asperity at 8:39 PM on April 27, 2015 [5 favorites]


I have been on both sides of this! That is, I have the type of job where working weekends and evenings is normal, but I have also been the wife who complains about being the last priority in the schedule.

I agree with the many people upthread who have suggested explicitly scheduling some time with your wife. I would suggest starting small and keeping those hours sacrosanct (12-2 on Saturday, say), rather than trying to block off entire days.

From the spousal side, I can attest that therapy helps. This works even if you don't address this specific argument in therapy: if you are happier with everything generally, you will be happier when spending time with your wife specifically, and she will notice.

I also want to note that there are certain difficulties that arise from being a wife in this situation, rather than a generic spouse. If your wife actually had an emergency-- if she was sick, or wounded, or her friend had just died-- you'd presumably drop work to attend to her needs. But if she would simply be annoyed or unhappy, she may fear her complaints come across as "nagging" or "annoying" or "feminine emotion". This holds even when the downside of not attending to your coworkers would in fact be at the annoying rather than life-threatening end of the scale. If this holds, you may need to establish a set of signals with your wife that distinguish between "she is mildly irritated" and "she is bleeding profusely, but does not need stitches". If she can trust that you will prioritize her aid when the stakes are whether her Monday is awful, rather than only when she is in imminent danger, she may be able to relax when the stakes are momentary frustration.
posted by yarntheory at 9:13 PM on April 27, 2015


I have been in your wife's situation, so I am admittedly coming from that perspective. Two things:

1. Unless your phone is paid for by your company, you're completely within your rights to disconnect it from the office Exchange server. I did that two years ago, and it has been gloriously freeing. You're salaried, and email is by design asynchronous; a reasonable expectation is that you will respond immediately to emails received during business hours, and at 9AM the next business day for anything else. If it's really bothering you, you can check it from your laptop once a night, but you can't keep it on your phone without it consuming your life.

2. Not all jobs are like this. Many (most?) white-collar jobs have a healthy respect for work/life boundaries, and won't try to gaslight you into becoming a 24/7 employee. If you need a tiebreaker, you should decide whether it would be easier to find a new job, or find a new wife. (It really is that enraging to the affected spouse)
posted by Mayor West at 5:55 AM on April 28, 2015 [2 favorites]


I'm the same way. I compulsively check my phone (and I bet you do to). First step, was disabling email notification. That meant I didn't get bothered by incoming email immediately. Second step was to disable work email on my phone completely. I can still get to it, its just not as easy. This means that I only check email on my computer when I decide to. I'm on my computer during work hours and during that window I respond immediately. In off hours, I'll sometimes check my email and will perhaps respond to clients' emergency requests. Work people can still get a hold of me if it's an emergency, but email is not an emergency.

Additional trick I've acquired is that I leave my laptop at work most days during the week. That means I simply can't do anything work related at home.

If your work place demands 100% availability without compensation and that's an acceptable part of the culture then you may have bigger problems.
posted by aeighty at 9:04 AM on April 28, 2015


I feel your pain and understand it sometimes is not as simple as telling your boss you aren't available on Sundays or whatever. I was an associate attorney at a prominent law firm in New York for 7 years and there was an expectation that I would be available 24/7 (and I was). I was screamed at the few times I was not. I would have definitely lost my job if I refused to respond to emails on the weekends or evenings or refused to work 24 or 48 or 72 hours straight with little to no notice.

If this is your situation and you are finding it untenable, then you need to start making plans to find another job that provides a better work/life balance. That is what I did last year and, even though I had to take a massive pay cut, my life is immeasurably better. I can spend time with my wife and son, I can relax at night and on the weekends, I can make plans and keep them and, best of all, I don't feel a constant overwhelming dread.

I am assuming a lot in my response, so if you really do have the ability to carve out space for yourself without getting fired, then by all means you should do that if you like your job. However, if you had a job like mine where constant availability was absolutely required, then the only solution is to transition to a different job. Choosing family and more free time over money was the best career decision I have ever made.
posted by Falconetti at 9:12 AM on April 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


Try this: schedule blocks of unavailable time on your calendar with labels like "commitment." During those times, you can respond to work emails with something like "will do" or "I can turn to this first thing tomorrow morning - let me know if that works." But otherwise, you're in a meeting (for all intents and purposes).
posted by prefpara at 10:20 AM on April 28, 2015


I think your wife is being very reasonable. If you've noticed it might destroy your marriage than clearly your wife has been very vocal about her feelings.

If I had a spouse who spent all day, all night and weekend working then I'd feel single...which is the opposite of why you married each other. I think restrictions work to no more than 50 hours a week would really free up time. Plus it may be worth considering another job.

Also think of it this way. You seem to be a little up the chain at work so I'm assuming you're in your 30s. Since you're well paid you can probably retire in the next 20-30 years. Based on average lifespans your marriage has has another 50-60 years. It's a lot easier to lose and find a new job than it is to rebuild a damaged or lost relationship.
posted by CosmicSeeker42 at 5:17 PM on April 28, 2015


Is there an end in sight for this schedule in your particular industry? In other words, do you have to change or is the job itself going to change soon? As-is, it doesn't sound like it works for your marriage. I was in a job just like yours for just about the same amount of time, but knew the next 'stage' of that career was just another year or so ahead, after which it would slow down somewhat, become more predictable in terms of scheduling and work-life balance, and pay more. Do you have something like that on the horizon? Every job has crazy times where you work crazy hours for a while, but literally no job that someone's expected to do year in and year out without burning out is always like this.

Also, if you make really good money, schedule at least 2 to 3 times a year where you're going to Fiji or or Borneo or somewhere for 7 to 10 days where you're not reasonably expected to participate. This is a must-do. Let the whole world know you're going and make sure your out-of-office reply is "limited email access, may read, definitely won't reply, please call this person if urgent" etc. Doing these types of trips makes the day-to-day bullshit where you're stepping on your wife's expectations much more manageable.

For what it's worth, I knew this wouldn't work for me in the long term so I changed jobs (same career, same industry). I have a work phone and a personal phone. Changing jobs allowed me to establish a new work/life balance--I don't think I could have changed it once I'd established that pattern at my old job. I only check work emails ONCE on weeknights, roughly a half-hour before I go to bed so I have time to work on something if it's urgent--and urgent in my new job means work is literally calling me up on the phone. I check emails maybe 2 or 3 times a day on weekends (more on Saturday than Sunday) just to stay on top of issues, triage/flag emails so I know what to hit first thing Monday, and keep the unread mail to a minimum (I maintain zero unread on my work and personal emails). Looking back, I could have done this even while at the more demanding prior job I had--I just didn't have the courage to do it.
posted by resurrexit at 11:14 AM on April 30, 2015


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