Tripping
Basically ever since my career started in earnest all those years ago at American Pride Seafood, I have had something of an ongoing issue with business travel and Chuck's attitude. When I was with APS, my travel was fairly infrequent, but it was there - I went away at least once a year to the Boston Seafood Show for 3-4 days, and might hit one other trade show for 3-4 days, as well as maybe 2-3 customer calls which often lasted no more than 3 days. Usually this wasn't a HUGE problem, as Chuck had his own job and we still had friends in the area, but he usually was still bummed about my time away, as one might expect.
When we moved to Green Bay, his attitude towards my travel got much worse, and somewhat understandably so - we didn't have friends in the area yet, and almost right away I was sent on a couple of 4 -5 day trips to San Francisco for my early project work. That's a lot of alone time to deal with. However, things didn't get alot better in terms of how he viewed my travel while we were in Green Bay. After Lucia was born it was even more of a strain for him, and again, that was understandable. Fortunately my trips at that point didn't last longer than 3 days on average, even if they were more frequent.
Luckily, I only have had one overnight trip since I started my new job in early October - that's almost 8 months with only 1 tiny trip. Next week I will be gone for essentially 6 full days, which I knew was going to be a challenge - we talked about it, and Chuck convinced his mom to come down for the week to help out. Fortunately she was available! So, despite it being a bit dramatic, we were able to strategize something to make it less onerous.
Now, though, I am scheduling a 4-day trip in mid-July to support a trade show, and it was a hassle to mention it to him again after giving him a forewarning about 2-3 weeks ago. He wants to pull his mom down here AGAIN to help, and I just can't help but feel like he's wimping out. I used to have to travel 2-4 days almost every 6 weeks during my last almost-year with Pinnacle; I don't know why one 4-day trip is such a big hairy deal. I know it's hard to pull single-parent duty for a while; I'm not saying he shouldn't be bummed about it. I just want him to maybe tone down the initial "Oh, that's just GREAT" sarcasm response that sends me on a guilt trip, and then makes me angry at him for making me guilty for something that I work hard to minimize, but have little control over as it is part of my job, and is unlikely to change at any point in the near future.
At this point I'm just afraid to breach the topic at all, because so often he comes away from similar discussions with the impression that I don't want him to express his emotions. That's certainly not true, but I would love it if he could dampen them a little, or process them in a less sarcastic, ascerbic way. I just want to find a way to make him less miserable, whatever that may be. Having his mom come to help is fine now and again, if that does the trick, but I feel it's imposing on his parents to call them in for a short trip, especially since his mom relies on his dad to drive her the 6+ hours down from western NY.
TL;DR - I have to talk to Chuck about how I feel about his reaction to my having to travel for business, and find some way of ameliorating this, but I am dreading the conversation.
When we moved to Green Bay, his attitude towards my travel got much worse, and somewhat understandably so - we didn't have friends in the area yet, and almost right away I was sent on a couple of 4 -5 day trips to San Francisco for my early project work. That's a lot of alone time to deal with. However, things didn't get alot better in terms of how he viewed my travel while we were in Green Bay. After Lucia was born it was even more of a strain for him, and again, that was understandable. Fortunately my trips at that point didn't last longer than 3 days on average, even if they were more frequent.
Luckily, I only have had one overnight trip since I started my new job in early October - that's almost 8 months with only 1 tiny trip. Next week I will be gone for essentially 6 full days, which I knew was going to be a challenge - we talked about it, and Chuck convinced his mom to come down for the week to help out. Fortunately she was available! So, despite it being a bit dramatic, we were able to strategize something to make it less onerous.
Now, though, I am scheduling a 4-day trip in mid-July to support a trade show, and it was a hassle to mention it to him again after giving him a forewarning about 2-3 weeks ago. He wants to pull his mom down here AGAIN to help, and I just can't help but feel like he's wimping out. I used to have to travel 2-4 days almost every 6 weeks during my last almost-year with Pinnacle; I don't know why one 4-day trip is such a big hairy deal. I know it's hard to pull single-parent duty for a while; I'm not saying he shouldn't be bummed about it. I just want him to maybe tone down the initial "Oh, that's just GREAT" sarcasm response that sends me on a guilt trip, and then makes me angry at him for making me guilty for something that I work hard to minimize, but have little control over as it is part of my job, and is unlikely to change at any point in the near future.
At this point I'm just afraid to breach the topic at all, because so often he comes away from similar discussions with the impression that I don't want him to express his emotions. That's certainly not true, but I would love it if he could dampen them a little, or process them in a less sarcastic, ascerbic way. I just want to find a way to make him less miserable, whatever that may be. Having his mom come to help is fine now and again, if that does the trick, but I feel it's imposing on his parents to call them in for a short trip, especially since his mom relies on his dad to drive her the 6+ hours down from western NY.
TL;DR - I have to talk to Chuck about how I feel about his reaction to my having to travel for business, and find some way of ameliorating this, but I am dreading the conversation.