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When both partners in a relationship work, the biggest problem is not having enough time to enjoy life.
When one of you works and the other doesn't, the biggest problem isn't usually inadequate time, it's inadequate attention.
Sometimes, it's even worse than that. It's inadequate respect.
When both partners work there's usually enough money to eat out occasionally, get some dry cleaning done, and pay for the kids' piano lessons and soccer leagues. But the work week is hardly ever just 40 hours, especially with cell phones, wireless laptops, and your boss's expectation of instant and incessant availability.
Couples with kids AND careers seldom manage to have much alone-together, quality-interaction time during the work week. And with one full day of the weekend devoted to chores and activities, and another day devoted to church or socializing with other families, there's typically less than a handful of hours when couples can be coupling, emotionally or otherwise.
Usually the time you do have available is time that has little or no energy left to power it. When you are wiped out, exhausted and barely able to keep your eyes open, it's not a good time to say or hear, "We need to talk about our relationship."
On the other hand, if only one partner works, then the other usually shoulders most of the maintenance chores dual-income couples have to share. That can - although it may not - allow the one-career couple to have luxurious hours to be family-oriented, rather than frantically activity-driven.
(Of course, if the stay-at-home partner has multiple kids to care for, or has a part-time job or volunteer activities that take up some of their available hours, those un-scheduled hours may shrink to nothing. Exceptions to all rules and stereotypes abound.)
When your incomes aren't even close to equal, it usually means that one partner isn't working, or isn't working much, outside the home. And that might give you time to spare that dual-income couples envy. But that extra time doesn't automatically translate into focused attention on developing their relationship. In fact, although dual-career couples crave time, one-career couples crave attention. Especially if you are the stay-at-home partner, you might not have something else that matters more - your partner's attention or respect.
If you're working, you think about projects, co-workers, obstacles and opportunities. Those projects don't stop being a focus of attention just because you are heading homeward. It's perfectly natural and understandably normal not to think about what your stay-at-home mate is doing, since you are confident that those responsibilities are being managed.
If you're manning the home front, managing maintenance, childcare and food prep, you have plenty of projects to occupy you as well. There may not be co-workers to team with, but there are certainly relationships that must be nurtured as carefully as any work-team supervisor must. You won't be thinking about your mate's work projects much when you've got a child-induced crisis every fifteen minutes of your day.
When the working partner gets home at the end of the day, the stay-at-home partner may need a major dose of adult conversation. But the working partner is still pre-occupied with work priorities that haven't resolved themselves at the end of the day like a television series episode. Both need to refocus attention, but it's a scarce resource.
And because it's scarce, partners may compete for it. The at-home partner may phone the working partner several times a day, just to get attention. The working partner may withdraw from interaction, hiding in a newspaper, the television, or a computer to get their attention-tank refilled.
Working partners feel harassed when their mates are merely trying to get some attention. At-home partners can feel starved, neglected or abandoned because they don't seem to be able to get their partner's focused attention, ever.
The worst potential outcome of an income discrepancy is a lack of respect. If financial contribution is the only currency of worth inside the relationship, and especially if it is attached to power, the high-income earner gets all the marbles. They get to have a sense of being entitled to special attention by virtue of their paycheck. They expect to be treated like royalty. Not a good frame for partnership.
If the at-home partner feels their contribution is of little or no value, they may have a hard time feeling worthy, esteemed and respected. When your partner sees what you do as a service they might just as easily have paid for, then you feel like a hired hand, not a soul-mate of the heart.
Tips:
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Discuss who contributes what value(s) to the relationship, and decide which can be specialized and which must be shared.
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Make sure that the contributions feel approximately equal to both partners. If you can't reach this conclusion, you have a values conflict that might require some outside assistance to resolve.
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Appreciate, in observable expressive form, your partner's contributions. Don't just feel grateful, say "Thank you!" often in ways that your partner feels are meaningful.
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Find the scarcest resource in your relationship: time, attention, energy, money. Understand that the economy of your partnership will run on the scarcest resource, so you must plan for how you two will invest that resource. You may need an Energy budget that runs parallel to your financial budget. Nearly all couples have to negotiate Time and Attention budgets. Plan how you will spend time, energy and attention, just like you plan how you will spend money.
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At least quarterly, review how your "investments" are working. Check with each other whether your relationship needs a different allocation of time, attention or energy.
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Disconnect worth, dignity and respect from financial contribution.
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Decide explicitly what decision-making is split, what is shared, and what belongs to whom, with finances only a part of what is weighed in that process.
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