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An extremely busy globe-trotting consultant's wife shares eleven lessons she learnt from being a wife. Read on!
An extremely busy globe-trotting consultant’s wife shares eleven lessons she learnt from being a wife. Read on!
If you are married to a Consultant, I am sure you know the 4 Cs- Corporate-Clientele, Constant- Commuting, Crazy-Competition and Cappuccino-Cocktail that have a strong presence in your husband’s life. To top it, the deadly Combination of all of these leads to the Cranking up of your life. How does one handle it? Here are a few things I learned all the way being a consultant’s wife. Let’s list them.
One. You got to sound super strong even though you may be feeling a weakling in your heart. Its a great life as a consultant’s wife when the spouse is around but the moment ‘Check-Ins’ begin, life goes crackling. Its super-tough to lie, convince and assure your parents, friends that you are doing amazing when the truth is living alone, missing hubby, having only a mobile to chat over, crying in low moments, and curling with a book on most of the nights is really giving you hard times.
Two. Now that you are married to this enigmatic guy blessed with powers of convincing, you have a new life as well as a new body clock to adhere to. You might have your own job but gradually your body learns to abide by the constant snoozing alarm clocks, early flights, late night meetings, conference-calling, email replying at two in the night, sleeping with the lights on, project deadlines, calls from client locations, never keeping to their promises of returning home early and the constant traveling of your consultant husband.
Three. Buy a globe or an atlas soon after you get married or ask someone to gift you one. You need it most to know the exact location of your husband and console yourself that he is nearby and that its a small world. You may not grow your vocabulary but you definitely learn the visa processes, currency exchange rates and the time difference of innumerable places around the globe. Friends and relatives soon look up to you for suggestions on holiday destinations. Oh yes! I can guide anyone on how to holiday in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia). I lived there for two months and roamed around in a burka too.
Four. Here comes a serious advantage of a globe-trotting husband. A consultant’s wife soon becomes a specialist in geography though in school she may have hardly scraped through with passing marks. She updates her FB constantly with the places, pictures, and foods of unique places. The foreign holidays or the forceful ‘tagging along’ earns her the status of a ‘well-traveled person’. No doubt, she may be a keen observer and learner herself but the credit goes to her husband. “Wow! What a husband you have! So lucky you are that you get to learn and travel to so many places!”
Five. Married to a consultant, soon you find yourself arrested in a sinusoidal curve of happy and depressing phases of life. The six weeks when he is home, you meet friends, catch up with families, go out for dinners, shop around, you rock the city even though the timelines and time-sheets are constantly on his mind (You eventually learn to ignore them)— Aaah the wife feels all loved and pampered in these lovely days but she doesn’t know the bomb is about to fall. In the fifth week, the good guy declares, “I will be away for next 8 weeks”. Its killing, believe me! Another lull period stares you right in the eyes and you fear those depressing nights and low weekends. Ask me, I can speak, write and blog more than Deepika Padukone on depression and learning to overcome it!
Six. Now, here is the answer to all those people who feel jealous about your happening life. Your super busy husband wants to see you super-busy too because it will keep him off the constant nagging. But a wife’s job gets affected. Honestly, I was not able to concentrate well in my job when it was a new marriage and hubby was constantly missing from my married life. At my job, I felt guilty asking for leave and my boss was finding it easy to read that I was handling my job loosely.
Seven. You learn to accept the bribes and gifts that he brings to make up for all the phone calls that he didn’t answer and for the days he extended his stay. Gradually you also learn to accept monosyllabic responses because most of the time there is an unanswered email that’s going around in his mind. He is smiling at you but I can bet he is thinking of the next call that he has to jump in to. When you ask, “You heard me, right?” He answers “Yes”. When you ask some more, you realize soon that he was sweetly ignoring you. When you take it to the next level, he meekly says, “The day has been grinding, now you don’t do this to me please.” When you say that you are not taking it any more, he says, “Its just happened today that I lost my attention, believe me it won’t happen again” . No, no don’t fall for it. He will do it again in the next hour because you know he is a busy consultant.
Eight. You eventually have to learn to fight the baby fat too. Your guy will never return from Africa or the Middle East or Europe empty-handed. Loads of chocolates are brought – for you, for your family and your friends. When you ask them, “Why so many, I will grow fat?”, he will sweetly say, “I thought you loved them baby, you must have a stock-full always.” Really? I answer back, “I love you too baby, why don’t you apply the same to yourself and just stay here with me always?”
Nine. It starts after the first year but a wife learns to ace it too. Going deaf to the noises around, “So when do you plan a family?” Those people who know your life in and out pester you even more. The world rejoices in troubling an already troubled soul. How do you tell them again and again that your guy is too busy traveling and single parenting is not your cup of tea?
But then one day you do give in to the pressures as you want to believe that the guy will travel less and will enjoy being with the baby. Now this is really so hurting – the child matters and not the wife. But its a woman’s soul and you take the plunge. Well, this is the really scary bit where I am told that its almost like single parenting when you are a consultant’s wife. You look after your kids and you play the whole parental role all alone; the husband will not change because his job and traveling will not stop. Recently I read that the partner of a consulting firm meets his kid only twice in a week. Yes, its a really sad state of affairs!
Ten. You soon realize you are married for life to a person who can never be on time on the days when its matters to you. He promises to be back in just six weeks, the project definitely gets extended for two weeks without any fault of his. He assures you he will keep track of time and return from the party on time but that never happens. The same person who is utterly punctual about his job mandates forgets to see his watch when its time to come back home. Further, he promises he will be there with you for the Karwachauth Puja next year but that is far away and promises are tough to keep. The most important project of his career falls in his kitty during October-November and he has to go. You had said you wouldn’t fast but still you do because you are a wife. Skype is there to help you do the nitty gritties of seeing the husband post the prayers around the moon. (Out of three, I have done two long distance fastings and I know how a hungry wife feels when her husband is away in Europe).
Eleven. The consultant’s wife learns to fix up her own things from the kitchen drainage to the blockage in the washroom. She gradually becomes patient. She learns to ignore your ignorance. She learns to attend some important family parties alone, she learns to miss functions to avoid that nagging question, “Where is your husband traveling now? Oh! you hardly get to live with the poor chap.” She learns to maneuver the car or move around in metros and autos. She may have been the pampered daughter of her parents but she soon learns to live alone, cry in loneliness, overcome her depression, look after the kids and manage the house single handedly.
Of all this that I have written above, I must say the consultant guy works too hard and definitely there is a woman behind his success who should never be forgotten. Together, there goes a lot of effort in maintaining this relationship. With crazy love and unwritten commitment, the husband-wife bond keeps going. Yes, all urban love stories are made up of these interesting adjustments and sacrifices. The very fact that I have a consultant husband gives me enough reasons to crib, complain and cherish as g an engineer-blogger, create peppy stories. Laugh away!
Hats off to all the super-wives of the always on-the-go busy (Consultant) guys.
Couple image via Shutterstock
First published at the author’s blog
Manjulika Pramod is a Telecom engineer, Author, Travel blogger and Hobby artist. She has written 'Kaleidoscope of Cheer and Hope.' After working for 8 years in the corporate industry, she gave up her regular job read more...
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