Wives Who Work From Home - Yes Honey, I Do Have a Jobby Heather Long | More from this Blogger 21 May 2007 06:15 AM Saturday, we talked about wives who work from home and we're launching a series on wives who work from home this week and how it may affect your home life, specifically your marriage. For business tips, check out our home business blog. Yes Honey, I Do Have a Job One difficulty you may have when you are a wife who works from home is that your spouse may not appreciate that you actually have a job. A typical day for me begins about 4:30 in the morning. I get up, have a light workout followed by a shower and a cup of coffee. Then I start work, I write for about an hour and then my daughter is up and it's time to get her fed, ready for school and off on time. Once she's at school, I come back to the house and work for another couple of hours before running any errands that need to be done. Errands usually take an hour to an hour and a half and then I'm back to work. In and around all of this, I take care of the house, volunteer at the school and let's not forget look after our daughter and make sure she gets to her after school activities and so much more. I am always running. My husband gets up around 8 and is out of the house by 9 and then isn't home again until after 5 or 6. There are many times during the day when he'll call and ask me to take care of something for him and for the first couple of years I was working out of the house, he would ask me to run almost all the errands and to take care of most of these things because I was home. When he came home at night, he would talk about how tired he was and that's why he couldn't do something and I would get very frustrated and I remember the first argument we had because he said he couldn't do something and his reason, and he emphasized that he had a job! The implication being, I didn't because I just work from the house - thus I don't work as hard, etc, etc etc. A Piece of Advice Gentleman, ladies - if your spouse works from home and by work, I refer to any employment they engage in at home whether it's being a stay-at-home mom or working out of a home office - it's still WORKING. Don't be dismissive of it and don't act like it doesn't rate up there with your job in an office. It's hard to work from home, it's hard to balance all the things that need to be done and it's hard to make it work in such a way that no one feels neglected. It's important to respect an accomplishment and to put value into it - whether you understand what it is your wife or husband does when you walk out the front door and are gone for hours - you need to respect it. It's important to respect them and appreciate them. Have you had trouble with your spouse respecting your working at home? Be sure to check out the home business blog for great tips on starting and running your home business. Related Articles: Married with Children - A Disruption Of Life? Calling a Truce in the War of the Wives Standards of Comparison: Housewife versus Stay At Home Mom Learn more about Heather Long  Heather Long is 35 years old and currently lives in Wylie, Texas. She has been a freelance writer for six years. Her husband and she met while working together at America Online over ten years ago. Relevantmarriage tags User Comments  Heather Long (16954) 22 May 2007 01:48 PMUse a white board and I'm not kidding. Break it down for him so he can see the hours spent working along with the valid income. That's what I did with my husband -- I spent a week where I literally catalogued everything I did from the time I got up and the amount of time it took me to do it. Then I broke down my paychecks -- hourly based on the time spent. I hope that helps.  Andrea Hermitt (5472) 22 May 2007 06:39 PMI have this problem on and off. When hubby forgets my value, I put the money I make on strike. I just let the money I make sit in the bank for a month and build up. I don't care what we need to buy. I don't care if we have no food. At the end of the month, I show him how much money I made and then go clothes shopping for myself. Drastic, but doing this once a year or so definately gets his attention. Likewise when he complains that I don't keep the house well... I stop keeping it up at all! Whoever created passive agressiveness was genius. Community Tags home business, relationship balance, Respect, wives who work, working from home Discuss this article
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