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While you were away: How couples cope when jobs keep them apart
| Monday, Jul 24 2006 5:45 PM
Last Updated: Monday, Jul 24 2006 5:52 PM
Absence can make the heart grow fonder. Or, in Duane Langston's case, it can lead to a third divorce.
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Langston, a directional drilling supervisor with Baker Hughes INTEQ, who works a schedule heavy on time spent away from his home in Bakersfield, can attest to the damage his line of work can wreak on family relationships.
"It's definitely tough on a marriage," he said by telephone from his offshore office in Long Beach. "You miss everything."
Keeping a relationship together and raising children is a challenge to begin with, but when work regularly removes a parent from the home for days or weeks at a time, how does a family cope?
From oil rig, to cockpit, to fire engine, on-the-go Kern County residents discuss the difficulties of travel-intensive careers and how they squeeze the most out of limited family time.
Talk to me, baby
Open communication is key in relationships where one partner must work away from home, said Laurie Stamps, a psychiatric social worker with Kaiser Permanente in Bakersfield.
Couples need to understand the pressures each faces, at home and at work, and children need reassurance that mommy or daddy will return, she said.
Routine phone calls scheduled at regular times are the ideal way to stay connected, Stamps said. But, really, any call any time will do when the nature of a job defies a schedule.
Capt. John Moreno loves the rush he gets from leading his Bureau of Land Management firefighters in the battle against summer blazes.
The downside is he may be gone for weeks at a time, without warning, and occasionally with no way to communicate with his girlfriend of six years, Toni Kendrick.
On his last assignment, wildfires in New Mexico, he got lucky. Holed up in hotel rooms every night, Moreno was able to check up on Kendrick, their 10-month-old daughter and Kendrick's two older girls.
Kendrick eagerly awaits those phone calls. "I hate it when he goes two or three days without calling," she said. "I wonder if something happened."
Bakersfield resident and Alaska Airlines pilot Mark Schaefer and his wife, Julia, credit frequent communication -- meaning several phone calls for every one of the three to four days a week Schaefer is gone -- with keeping them content.
With so many tech-savvy ways to keep in touch -- cell phones, e-mail, instant messaging, webcams -- the Schaefers also use a little more old-fashioned and romantic approach: journaling.
The two have kept a journal for more than five years. The entries aren't fluffy love poems; instead it's the stuff of everyday life, little things that might otherwise get lost in the daily hustle.
Occasionally, Schaefer will even bring home little goodies for his wife and wrap them up with the journal as a special homecoming gift.
"We don't do a lot of date nights, but this is a nice alternative to that," she said.
Kiddie time
Children, especially young ones, often feel lonesome when work takes mom or dad away from home for days or weeks at a time, Stamps said.
Because of his travel-intensive oil industry job, Langston hardly saw his children, both from his second marriage, until he switched work schedules this year at their insistence.
Langston said his sons, ages 5 and 10, were sick of him missing everything, even Christmas, because he worked 23 to 24 days out of the month.
"You miss birthdays," he said. "You miss all the school stuff."
Now he works two weeks on, two weeks off and he and the boys watch motorcycle racing and go camping and swimming at the lake.
Of course, there are times when children prefer a parent be gone -- like when that parent is the primary disciplinarian.
Moreno admits he has a reputation around his house for being the heavy.
"We still have rules when he's gone, but it's a little more lenient," his girlfriend said.
While he stops short of saying it's a party when he's not around, Moreno does suspect that Kendrick's daughters, ages 11 and 12, probably have a little more fun when he's off dousing fires.
He said he sometimes jokes, "You probably don't want me to come home."
Someone to lean on
When a partner can't be there physically, counting on a strong support network of family and friends can help ease the burden, Stamps said.
Making their home in Bakersfield was a strategic part of the Schaefers' plans. They are close to both sets of grandparents and they have a large, involved and incredibly helpful group of friends.
"I can't imagine having this kind of lifestyle and being completely on your own," said Schaefer, a stay-at-home mother of two, with a third child on the way.
Supportive friends are a plus, but it's a schedule jam-packed with play dates, church activities and shopping that keeps Schaefer and the children from going stir crazy when her husband is gone.
"I knew going into this marriage that he was going to be away a lot," she said. "If I just waited for him to be home to plan my activities, I would be a bored woman."
All my exes
While the Schaefers and Moreno and Kendrick are thriving together and apart, not all relationships can weather frequent absences.
"I think that it's probably not the greatest situation for families to be in for the long-term," Stamps said. "People start to think, 'I got married to be with somebody and that's not happening.'"
In Langston's case, the double-whammy of his never-home oil job, paired with his soon-to-be-ex-wife's jet-setting job as an airline pilot, spelled disaster.
He wasn't even home to fill out the divorce papers -- his wife had to call him offshore and read through the forms over the phone.
But will his job keep him from searching for happiness a fourth time around? No way.
"I got days off now," he said. "So now I can go find number four."
Well, actually, he's already found her.
Langston's fiancee and soon-to-be fourth wife arrived in Bakersfield from Phoenix two weeks ago.