by R.L Hanlon

Created on: February 09, 2008

It makes for a terribly lonely and sad existence when our jobs become more important than our relationships. We don't intend for them to do so but the rising mortgage rates and economy inflation has made the cost of living to expensive. The higher cost in fuel, costs of educating our children and the cost of simple social activities such as attending the Cinema have also increased.

But our weekly or annual wages have not increased to accommodate these rising costs. The old 9am to 5pm job, dad at work and mom at home with the kids no longer exists. Shops are open longer and all through the week, evening and weekend. No longer is Sunday considered a family day or day of rest, it now involves one of us working and the other attending sports activities.

I'll introduce you to my life. My partner works from 6am until 5pm, he leaves work, gives me the car and then I go to work until 11pm. One week he will work a Saturday and the alternative weekend I work. When we're not together, we have demands of parenting and household chores that need to be done. This is what we do to keep the house over our heads and put food into our children's mouths.

Here are some tips we use to avoid neglect within our relationship. It's important that all couples do this as it's very easy to grow apart from one another, emotional and physically unless you place some priority on maintaining a balanced and healthy work and personal life.

~Aspirations~

It's important that as a couple, you both sit down and work out what each of your desires and wishes for the future hold. If you're both working to pay off that mortgage, you both need to contribute the same energy and enthusiasm into doing so. If both of you are working towards a goal, and that goal is shared equally than you will be more successful in obtaining it.

If you have a family and working these hours are detrimental to your children's welfare, then you both need to sit down and discuss your motives and intentions. Being career minded while at the same time wanting to provide a good family life for your children, may not be suitable at the current time.

~Change~

If one or neither of you is happy with your current arrangements, then it must change. The first step is admitting there is a problem. Sit down together and find out of you're achieving what you set out to do, if not then you shouldn't be focusing all your energy into it.

Together, you could both investigate alternative arrangements. Maybe you could job-share, where one of you works

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