Hello TeaK,

We have talked about how her hours affect the family, we have that conversation once or twice a year.  She is not as open with her feelings as I am, she likes to keep things bottled up, while I will talk about how her hours affects me and our son, so she does know how I feel.  Also our son gets upset if she tries to get him out of bed in the morning, doesn’t want her to change his diaper, dress him, give him dinner (the nights that she does get home early), or put him to bed.  He will cry for me whenever she tries to do this kind of stuff, and I know it hurts her when he does this.  So I find that I ignore him while she is home, so that he will go to her for things, but he will usually just cry until I pay attention to him.

As far as why she stays at work for these long hours, we have not talked in detail about that. I know that she does all the work in the barn, takes breaks and has tea with the owners, talks with her clients, sometimes she will have a few glasses of wine after she is done with the owners or clients at the barn.  She does have some workers/volunteers that help her out sometimes, but it might be one or two days a week, and she will stay to fix what they did, because it was not done how she wants it done. I do not think that she stays because she is avoiding me, she does ask if we could go out on dates or just to dinner.  When I do plan dates or dinners she is usually late, and we can not go because it is past the reservation time or just too late to actually go out.

We have talked about what the property owners should be doing and what she does, but she doesn’t like the way they do things most of the time.  She thinks that they do things the cheap and easy way instead of the correct way, which is the case sometimes.  But she will stay to mow the fields when that is something that the property owners do, and they don’t say a word about it because it is something that they do not need to do.  I keep telling her to let them do what they are supposed to do, but she wants things done her way.

I will try to have another talk with her about all of this, and see how it works out…

Thank you.