Tired of the child, the husband is on watch. Husband is a shift worker

In parting, he rode our three-year-old son on his back (he squealed with delight - his favorite attraction!). At the door he kissed me: “I left the cash for the first time, then you will remove it from my card.” And he left into the night. And little Temka and I stood at the window for a long time and looked after him.

... In the courtyard of our new building, mothers with strollers sympathetically ask: “Where is your dad? It hasn't been seen in a long time." I throw up my hands: “You see, he is at home for a month, at work for a month.” Neighbors obviously do not understand. “Ah-ah, sea captain,” they nod with an air of “we know, we know, you don’t have to tell the story about the disappeared hero.”

I don't want to prove anything. They will see for themselves - in three weeks Denis will return.

As usual, early Wednesday morning. His flight UN-228 Aktau-Moscow, Boeing is packed to capacity with oilmen of all stripes: from top managers to crane operators. Most of them fly with transfers further: to Krasnodar, Rostov, Taganrog. Among the transit passengers there are British, Canadians, and Italians - they all work together with my husband in one of the transnational companies on the shores of the Caspian Sea.

In general, it does not even matter what kind of company it is. There are many of them in the world. How many people go fishing only to our Far East and Siberia! And, as a rule, they are all men. And their women, just like during the Crusades, can only wait and believe that their loved ones will return alive and unharmed. That their love will surely withstand the regular tests of separation, and the marriage will not turn into a guest.

I'm reading the revelations on the forums now. “The spouse was offered a highly paid job on a rotational basis. Let him go or not?" the girl asks. At least fifty members of the forum join the discussion, everyone shares their stories (one is sadder than the other) and tends to the harsh “No!”. The arguments are simple - men far from home indulge in all serious things: in the evenings, they drink vodka out of boredom, and after drinking, they seek affection from local girls from the attendants.

Our secret

Honestly, the question before me is “Should I let go?” didn't even stand. When we met, Denis had been living such a life for many years, making good money and was absolutely satisfied with his profession. “I’m not going to go to the office every day through metropolitan traffic jams, wear a tie, take a vacation for two weeks a year, do boring shifting pieces of paper and get half as much for it as now,” he announced immediately. I, head over heels in love, could only take it for granted. Somehow, for example, that his eyes are magical green.

A few days after our first date, my green-eyed flew away for the next shift. Then it was hot and wild Turkmenistan, then - permafrost near Novy Urengoy, and even later - the endless Kazakh steppes. A total of sixteen years of work experience, nine of which we are a couple.

Of course, it is not easy to live in such a regime and not lose the "feeling of the family", despite the fact that the fears of the members of the forum are not entirely groundless. And how many joys and sorrows have to be experienced separately! The first step of the child and his first word - will dad find them? Ours didn't.

However, I always remember that sweet lemonade can be made from sour lemon, and I find a lot of advantages in this marriage format. Therefore, when colleagues at Cosmo asked me what the secret of our happy couple was, I answered them as if in spirit: “In my husband’s shift work, of course!”

While everyone is at home

And she didn’t cheat: partly due to the fact that we don’t spend side by side 365 days a year, our love boat keeps afloat and doesn’t think about breaking into everyday life. Routine, boredom - what are you talking about? The whole month, while Denis is on vacation, we live like a small life.

We meet at the airport with bated breath. Hugs, kisses, romance! The first week we can not look enough at each other, talk enough. Passions are raging, hormones are going through the roof.

The second week passes more calmly - debts accumulate in my editorial office, and my husband has been waiting for household chores: it's time, for example, to nail a nail that flew off in his absence or visit my mother.

At the end of the second - the beginning of the third week, we invariably have a period of "grinding in" characters, as happens with newlyweds after their honeymoon. Accustomed to living in a hotel with everything ready, Denis forgets that he doesn’t have a maid-washer-cook at home and gets annoyed if I don’t perform their functions too professionally (and at the same time scatters my socks in all corners). What infuriates me is that he has already visited his mother three times, and has not bothered to nail the conditional nail.

In general, both of us can flare up, slam the door and go cry or smoke. But after this comes catharsis, with a white flag we go towards each other, sort out the conflict situation step by step, forgive insults and live together happily ever after.

Well, not that long, of course. The rest of the third and entire fourth week. But happy, that's for sure. And then, for some reason, always unexpectedly, the time comes to say goodbye, and again I, barely holding back tears, help him pack his things in a backpack.

In standby

Still, separation greatly tones the relationship! After parting, we both miss and count the days until the meeting, call up five times a day, in the evenings we communicate on Skype. And at a distance with all clarity we understand that for each other we are the closest people.

However, a month apart passes with us as rapidly as a month together. There is plenty of personal time and space, the main thing is to use them properly. Look - I offhand gave a far from complete list of things that you can do when your husband is on duty.

• Immerse yourself in your work or study without being distracted by the personal. When our child was not yet born, I disappeared at the university, taking exams ahead of schedule, I could spend the night in the editorial office, completing important projects. And no one at home reproached me for it.
• Invite girlfriends to your place with an overnight stay, keep secrets.
• To go on a business trip with a light heart, knowing that the husband is also in business, and not languishing alone at home, without high-calorie and meat food.
• Go on a diet. after all, you don’t need to cook “real men’s food” for breakfast, lunch and dinner - high-calorie and meat. My son and I have enough vegetables, cereals and fruits cooked in a double boiler. Can you imagine how much easier life becomes?
• Go freelancing and leave for permanent residence in a warm, friendly country. The company pays her husband air tickets to anywhere in the world, so we are not tied to one place. We have already lived like this in the Balkans and it is possible that in the future we will rush somewhere else.
• Relax and not take care of your appearance so carefully. Do not wear make-up from morning to night, but wear anti-sexual pajamas all Sunday.
• Vice versa , take care of your appearance and do some kind of masochistic beauty procedure, like a chemical peel or laser hair removal. The traces will heal just in time for the arrival of a loved one, you won’t have to injure his psyche with your appearance.

Mom's son

Yes, with the advent of the child, something has changed (for example, I no longer sleep at work), but not too dramatically.

What to do if the shift worker husband drinks? Notes of the shift worker's wife.

I am very very lucky in my family life, I don’t know what it means when a drunkard husband lives nearby, but this does not mean at all that I don’t know what it is and how difficult it is for women in such a situation.

According to my husband's stories, I know that few people drink during the entire shift, everyone usually leads a sober lifestyle, since the fines are simply fantastic.

But as soon as I sit down late and go home, I immediately begin to pounce on the bottles, like life-giving nectar, and go into oblivion. The most terrible thing is that it continues not only all the way, but the entire inter shift. And as far as we all understand, drunks are usually characterized by inadequate, antisocial behavior.

If your husband also has "inter-shift drunkenness", then I recommend that you first talk heart to heart with him. Find out his state of mind, learn about problems, show participation and, of course, indicate your position.

If there were such conversations more than once, but there was no sense, then you can draw your own conclusions. The bottle is more important to the husband. Then you need to decide whether you want to continue to live with such a person or not.

If you have made a firm serious decision to stay, then I recommend that you familiarize yourself with the following recommendations.

1. Do not shout or show aggression. This is not something that will not work on the drunkard’s husband, but will even provoke a counter reaction.

2. However, you can arrange a psychological shake-up and temporarily live separately.

3. Another way to make your husband forget about the bottle at least temporarily is to try to keep him busy. For example, help your husband find a hobby that interests him. For example, a gym or even an additional part-time job.

4. It is necessary that the husband as often as possible faced situations when it is necessary to show responsibility. Let him drive more often, solve household issues, help with children. And he feels good, there will be less time for a bottle, and you feel good - an assistant at home.

5. There are times when a drunken alcoholic, at his own request or on the advice of loved ones, decides to be coded. However, this is not the best solution. The encoding will someday end, and there are often cases when victims of alcohol pay for decoding and then drink again as before.

6. And one more very important moment for a woman. I recommend just taking care of yourself, your appearance, your self-development, find a hobby. This will allow you to take a different look at the situation and perhaps then, and the husband decides to change his lifestyle.

Over the past ten years, the number of shift workers has tripled. And in the future their number will only increase. Most often, men from the outback agree to such a schedule. But what about their wives, while the spouses are absent from home for months? However, judging by the letters of readers, women are absolutely unpredictable creatures. And not everyone really wants their miners to return to normal life.

There are not many jobs in our small town. All more or less decent men try to get a job in a foreign company and work on a rotational basis. When Ramis and I started dating, I knew that he was leaving for the north for a month and a half. Then he rests for three weeks. For a long time I persuaded him to change jobs, but his argument outweighed all my dissatisfaction: “But we will soon pay the mortgage to the end, what a car we have. Do you want to live in poverty, or something?” And indeed, the husbands of my girlfriends, of course, are at their side every evening, but the girls run to me every now and then - then lend one to the salary, then the other. We've been living like this for three years now. When my husband needs to leave for work in the morning, I get up at three in the morning and bake pies to give him with me on the road. And when he returns, I even take a day off from work, I cook a feast for the whole world all day long. It seemed to me that I got used to everything and even was satisfied. But two months ago a child was born, and all I want now is for my husband to help me, to be always there. And sometimes I feel like a single mother.
Leysan, Aznakayevo

I am a sailor, served in the Navy for 25 years. And all this time my wife Svetlana was there. They lived soul to soul. I did not go home for a long time, but then - a joyful meeting, a short rest (it flew by like one day) - and again I went swimming. Sveta complained that she was bored without me, and kept dreaming - when you quit, we will start a new, real life together. We won't be apart for a day!
And so I went to the reserve. So again the problem: Svetlana became annoyed by my presence. I have been living at home for only a month, and already there are disagreements, scandals. My hands itch, I want to nail something, drill, improve my life. And she objects - do not touch, and so everything is fine! It suddenly turned out that she was not used to standing at the stove every day. I tried to cook myself - again I ran into a scandal. Once I noticed a layer of dust on the chest of drawers, made a remark to her - she was in tears: I work all day (she is a doctor in a clinic), I have no time to deal with such nonsense! And she went to spend the night with a neighbor, slamming the door.
But the main thing is sex. For a month, with grief, they slept in half twice, instead - constant quarrels, at least run back to the sea from home.
Alexey, Vladivostok

NO LONGER A HOLIDAY
According to psychologists, the problem has a name - "return crisis". It is faced not only by sailors, shift workers, but also by geologists, truckers, actors - everyone who is not at home for a long time. The point is in the stereotype of their intimate life, when a joint stay is fleeting and is perceived as a holiday, I would say even as a sex adventure. And when business trips suddenly end and the husband settles at home, a crisis begins. We have to rub against each other again. It's very difficult. Problems mostly in men - poor erection, accelerated ejaculation.
What should Alexey do? It would be nice to change the situation, go away from home together, “pull out” of the usual life, play a holiday romance with each other, to the point of settling in different rooms and portraying lovers.

Photo by Oksana_Bondar/ iStock / Getty Images Plus

We could not find exact statistics on how many men in Russia work on a rotational basis (that is, they are absent from home from two weeks to several months). This is understandable: many shift workers are simply not formally employed. But it was easy to find wives who are waiting for their spouses at home. Their age, regions of residence and social status are different. Just like the stories of life at a time when husbands leave for work. We asked to write about it as frankly as possible, while promising to maintain confidentiality. The author's style and spelling (as far as possible) are preserved.

Liliya Sergeevna, Tomsk region:

“My husband went on shifts for fifteen years in a row. He started from the very moment when the small enterprise where he worked in our village went bankrupt and closed. At first I wept bitterly. Every time I collected it, different thoughts came into my head .... It seemed that he would die, that he would freeze, that he would not return, that he did not go on watch, but went to his mistress.

Now I remember, and it becomes funny. On average, Kolya left for a month and a half. But it happened that the roads from the fields where he worked did not open on time (for example, due to the weather, a crossing or a winter road could not be opened for him), and he lived away from home for two or even three months. But when he came - it was a holiday! We always went shopping in the city (Kolya began to earn good money), made repairs, added a warm bath and toilet to the house. Yes, and in our personal lives, everything just boiled!

You know, we could get bored with each other so much that then we didn’t get out of bed for three days. But we weren't even twenty years old! In short, I was more and more happy with my husband's new schedule. Only one thing upset him: his sons began to move away from him. They just grew up without him. By themselves. And when the husband came and began to join in their educational process, the guys, of course, reared up ... But - nothing! Somehow they grew up, and they finished school well, and both entered the university. Now my husband hasn’t been on shift for two years (he retired), but I still can’t get used to the fact that he is now at home all the time, and ... I even sometimes miss those times.

Tamara, KhMAO:

“How did I live when my husband worked on shifts? No way! By her own. And then she just got divorced. There is nothing more to say."

Ekaterina, Irkutsk:

« I understand that your site is for women and you like to write about amazing families and relationships in which everyone lived “happily ever after and died on the same day”, but this only happens in the movies. My husband went on duty for the first time when I was only 25 years old. Moreover, he flew to the north, where there was not even a real connection. We didn't speak for weeks. I was terribly sad. Cried in the evenings. But I wanted to go out somewhere else, take a walk, and in the end, just walk around the city with my husband ... Why, one wonders, did you get married?

In the end, she took a lover. And you know what was the most fun? That's certainly a real irony of fate ... After a couple of months, my lover also began to leave on long business trips (consider, on shifts). And in my life (and also in my bed), my two adored men have since been on schedule: a month - one, a month - another! So what? You asked honestly, I wrote.

Daria Sergeevna, Tobolsk:

“The watch saved not only our family budget, but also our relationship. Before getting a job in a large oil company and leaving for the Far North, my husband drank a lot and did not devote time at all to me or our three children. He was also fired from his last job for this ... I was shocked. I cried a lot. And then a friend of her husband offered to arrange a shift for him, but with only one condition: no drinking. This is TABOO. We coded my husband and sent him on duty the next day. Was it hard for me without him? Yes! Did I miss the kids? Of course! Would I like to return to my old life and again arrange for my husband to work in our city? No no and one more time no! The way we live now (even if most of the time not together, apart, away from each other), it's still wonderful! Husband doesn't drink! Earns! And when he comes home, he enjoys messing around with his daughters, because he admits that he misses all of us very much. So the shift is for a Russian peasant - real happiness, and also a real salvation for their wives.

Nina Selivanova, Podolsk:

“If you want to test a marriage for strength, and a husband for adequacy, send him to watch. Believe me, all the vices (if any) will come out here ... Mine, for example, managed to get himself a mistress at work. There they have a total of twenty people working in the village, of which two cooks and one nurse. That's where he hooked up with her. I found out too late. The nurse was already pregnant, and her husband went to her. Now let them watch together.”

Julia Ya., Khabarovsk Territory:

“I suspect what will be written here. Say, while my husband is gone, I miss him, it’s hard to communicate, the connection is bad, there is no time. And I’ll say this: while my husband is at work, I talk to him more than while he is at home, because when he is at home, he plays “tanchiki”, and when he is at work and has time to rest, he immediately remembers about his family and calls us. Still would! After all, there is simply no other entertainment there. ”

Svetlana Vyacheslavovna, Krasnoyarsk Territory:

“How do I live without a husband when he is on duty? I live great! With our children, everything is adjusted and debugged: when to get up, when to hang up, who will eat what. And when the husband arrives, it all starts to crumble and break. He is capricious like a child: cook this for him, then wash it. As a result, I count the days not before his arrival, but before his departure. And many girls, whose husbands also work, say the same thing. You get used to everything, and live married, but without a husband - too.

Elena Grigorienko, Tyumen:

“I do not live without my husband while he is on duty. For several years now I have been traveling with him and I am infinitely happy!”