Articles or books on Relationships often mention the classic stress points of Money, Parenting, Extended family etc. But they overlook the one I see coming up time and again with couples (& in my own marriage). Diary Management. Poor Diary Management causes couples an awful lot of grief, stress and arguments. Diary Management includes both the basics of communicating who is doing what & when AND agreeing the balance between work / family / couple / friends / exercise / me-time etc. It’s a big juggle and one that seems to often break down & cause huge rows and resentment.
Typical scenario: A & B are married with kids. A has a big job in the City and works long hours. B perhaps works part-time and juggles that with parenting their children. B likes to arrange things to do in the evening, either alone or as a couple. At the last minute A announces that A can’t make it back in time and hence B ends up cancelling B’s plans, possible letting friends down, and feeling frustrated, resentful and fed up = unhappy home. Meanwhile C & D both have full on jobs and both have to attend evening events or travel. As soon as C is unavailable, D has double the juggling to try and pick up the slack. E & F don’t have kids but end up spending no time together because lack of diary coordination means they are out on different evenings.
There are many other scenarios and poor Diary Management impacts everyone.
The Husband and I used to struggle with the Diary Management communication / admin issue a lot until we got wise to it and worked out a better approach. Ours is a 3 pronged approach. Firstly Husband’s PA has an informal objective to keep me happy!! She emails me in advance when Husband will be away or home late. She also checks with me if a date is ok for him to be away, if it’s flexible. Second, I let PA know when I need Husband back for events that I want to go to & check with both her or him before booking. (No PA? You both have to do it yourselves!). Thirdly we agreed a long time ago to throw money at any clashes if possible and book a babysitter. Even if it costs £20 for a sitter to be able to go to an £10 yoga class, we made the decision that really the additional £20 was paying to reduce resentment & for a happy home life and hence was worth it. And it’s not perfect, we both have to compromise – I can’t always attend things I want to and Husband sometimes has to miss out on work events that he probably should go to but we try and accommodate one another.
Other couples I know have linked their diaries electronically. Some have a weekly or monthly sit down to go through diaries and agree schedules. Some schedule in ‘couple time’ weeks in advance. You will find what works for you. What definitely doesn’t work is to not have a system at all – that causes a lot of unnecessary stress and upset. I’ll post more about balancing demands on our time next time.
Pls share & help prevent Diary Misery around the World. Sue XX