No, I’m not “glad of the peace”!

Earlier this week I mentioned to someone that Dave was working away all week and she said,

“Oooh aren’t you glad? I think I’d quite like that! It would be nice to have some peace”

I posted about this on my instagram stories and had so many messages about it that I thought it warranted a blog post.

The thing is, she’s not the only one to say it – lots of people have said they’d quite like a bit of time to themselves – and I guess I do understand that. The odd night in on your own to watch whatever you want on TV, to eat your favourite tea that your partner doesn’t like, to stay up late, to go to bed early, to please yourself. I get that. The odd night has a certain novelty factor.

But no, at the moment Dave is working away quite a lot – a night or two a week – enough that Chloe has told us she doesn’t really like Daddy’s job very much at the moment. It’s nothing in the scheme of things; compared to military families or single parents I know I have little to complain about but it doesn’t mean I enjoy him not being there.

I enjoy Dave’s company – even if that does mean sitting silently on the sofa together watching different screens. Because I work from home, my main sources of adult interaction are the school gates and Dave – so if he’s not here, and the kids are in childcare for a couple of days – I could easily not speak to anyone over the age of ten!

I don’t sleep well when he’s not here – I end up going to bed far too late and then not being able to sleep. I always used to say the same before we lived together and could only spend weekends together – I would sleep so well on a weekend compared to mid-week nights – of course it’s much worse now that we’ve been living together for nearly 13 years!

We are a team and everything is just a bit harder without him by my side – sharing the load. We work together to run the house and meet the needs of our kids – Dave cooks, I do all the laundry and cleaning (well in between cleans from our cleaner!), we both have different clubs we take the kids to. If he’s not here, then it means Amy has to come along and sit around while Ben and Chloe are swimming, then she gets to bed late. If he’s not here, I have to ask someone else to bring Ben and Chloe home from Cubs. If he’s not here, Chloe ends up missing her Street Dance class or I might struggle to get Amy to her swimming lesson. I guess what I’m saying is that things just don’t run as smoothly when part of the team is missing!

So no, I’m not enjoying the peace. I’m counting down till he comes home!