Sacrifice

"Who wants to be married to a shift worker?"

Doing this job can be tough. The long shifts, the ever changing shift pattern and the stressful nature of what we do and often see can take its toll. Most front line staff at one time or another will have suffered some form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, be it intrusive thoughts, flash backs and harrowing sights in their dreams. We all have coping mechanisms to deal with it but a lot of the effects spill over into our personal lives and can have a damaging effect on personal relationships. The fact that the 'relief' rota is known as the divorce rota speaks volumes. I can testify to it! My marriage suffered as a result, to the point where it was beyond repair. I was always tired, moody, didn't feel like talking about what was troubling me and generally became crap company. I pushed away the person I was closest to, the person who had supported my career change and for what?! There is a general feeling that if you don't do the job, you don't understand. You spend so long at work and form close relationships with people that they become the ones you confide in; that in itself can cause a strain. Add to that the fact that your colleagues are the only people off work when you are & you end up socialising with them too. It is therefore no surprise that it is a very incestual service. A large percentage of people are married to or partners with someone else in the job. Let's be honest, with a 7/10 weekend rota your chances of meeting someone outside of work is seriously limited. Obviously, there is no fuel without fire, my marriage break-up cannot be souly blamed on my work, but if I hadn't changed careers I do often wonder, what if?

As tough as it is on the ones doing to the long hours and varied shifts it is equally hard, if not harder, for the spouses who suffer the company of a miserable shift worker. It's a perspective that I can't give, as I haven't been on the receiving end of it, but it's a perspective I think is well worth hearing. Every argument has two sides, every divorce has two people hurting, so I thought it would be worth hearing it from the other side. Seeing what it's like to have someone who has a normal job and then dons the green and changes. Someone who saw their marriage fail, in no small part to being married to a shift worker. It is with great pleasure that I introduce Michelle, a friend who suffered the effects of the 'relief rota' from the other side of the fence: 

'My name is Michelle, and I was a shift widow.'

"I wonder if there is a support group for the shift widow? If there is, I never found it. He wasn't a paramedic when we got married, in fact he became one after I saw an advert in the Metro on my daily commute. He applied, he got in. I was happy for him, he’d been looking for a decent career for years. Would I still have shown him that advert if I'd known what would come next? Possibly not...

To give you an understanding of our situation, you should know that we have a small child and that I have a full time (9-5 office) job. So as well as navigating the shifts, we had to deal with childcare, my occasional evening and weekend work and sporadic train- related lateness as well as the odd attempt to see each other/have a life.

I'm not going to lie, living with a shift worker was a nightmare. Especially a disorganised one. Let's just say he wasn't exactly reliable when it came to sharing his shift pattern and the infamous 'Relief rota' seemed to be completely random. So I spent half the time not knowing when he was working. Cue lots of confusion over who was supposed to pick up our child. Or my mum letting herself into our house at random when he was in bed after a night shift and him going nuts at me about it (there's a whole other post on interfering mothers there... Maybe another time).

The side effect of a lack of information meant that I basically turned into a massive nag. Whenever we were both at home, all I did was to badger him for his rota so that I could sort out childcare and moan at him for never being around. He would snap at me, I got no information and on numerous occasions I couldn't attend work events or social gatherings. On top of that, apparently the housework was all my responsibility. Even though he seemed to sit around doing nothing and making a mess on his days off, my evenings and weekends comprised of looking after our child, cooking, cleaning and sleeping. I lost me and I lost my social life. It didn't take long for me to begin to resent it. And it wasn't much later that he started spending all his non-working time with his new paramedic mates, who I hated (despite never having met them) because as far as I was concerned they were the reason he wasn't spending any time with his family. Especially when I found out he’d told me he was working when he was actually out with them... Probably to avoid the inevitable fight if I found out.

It was less than a year after he started the job that he left. There were other things going on at the time that contributed to the split, but if I had to list the top three reasons for the end of our marriage, the job would be right up there. At the time, I didn’t see it as being the job and blamed him - which on reflection was unfair. But I didn’t understand the pressures of his job... and he didn’t have any idea of the impact of it on me either."

I think it's fair to say that there will always be two very contrasting opinions and versions of events. I think the point that there is a lack of understanding between the impact on each others lives is very poignant. So much can and could have been fixed with communication. It's all too easy to run away from the root of the problem and find alternatives to facing up to what is essentially staring you right in the face. Sacrifices are made for this job and there are times those sacrifices seem worthwhile. But it is important not to lose sight of the fact that we are not the only ones making that sacrifice.