Medical marriages, like military marriages, have unique challenges that are specific to this profession. Don’t expect other people to understand. They can’t.
Don’t expect your family or your friends in other professions to understand what a struggle surviving residency really is. Understanding someone else’s experience is really difficult unless you have lived it. You and I will never fully understand what their situations are like either.
For many years, I tried really hard to get certain people to grasp what my husband’s life was like. I wanted them to understand who he really was and why he wasn’t around. I knew his number one priority was me and the kids, yet I was always showing up alone to the kids’ activities or to church. It bothered me that others would have expectations of him and then be disappointed when it was impossible for him to meet those expectations. The truth is, most people hear 80-120 hours a week and assume you are exaggerating. No one can possibly work 3 full-time jobs – right? Even if they accepted that number, they couldn’t wrap their head around what that translated to in terms of when he was home – i.e. almost never. I had to accept that most people would not understand his schedule or the demands that were placed on him. Most people would not understand that I was a pseudo-single mom. I had to accept that it wasn’t their job to understand and it wasn’t my job to make them. {Lesson 3}
Just wanted to say thank you for this post. I found it by way of googling, “How can I prepare my spouse for my medical residency.” The roles in my case are flipped. I’m the one about to start residency, my husband is the super supportive and amazing, by the way, non medical spouse. I really could not have made it through all these years of school without his support. I plan on saving this page so I can look at it from time to time in the years to come. Thank you for your positivity and congratulations on your family’s success!