If you asked me it is not easy to strike a balance work and family life. Especially after having kids and you have to get ready yourself and the kids for school too in the morning and make sure everyone is fed with breakfast before you can start your workday.
While both my husband and me both tirelessly work to ensure we excel in our careers and we also try to strive to be great spouses. No doubt sometimes we feel overburdened and the pressure of performing at both ends could affect our health and psychological well being if we are not careful. Therefore, communication is super duper important in a marriage to seek understanding and know what each other are going through.
Many times after work when we rush home, after much delay in traffic, and are confronted by the mass of house work since we do not have a maid at the moment. Whether it is a messy kitchen, children's toys and books everywhere. The feeling of frustration would be there no matter how angelic you are.
But I know we are not alone. There must be plenty of other couples that are going through the same routine yet still very much loving and happy with their family lives and careers. Of course there are people who ends up being overloaded, and becomes less productive and unfulfilled both at work and at home. If you are not careful, you might make yourself barely sleep well at night and resume work every morning tired with sleep-shot eyes.
I know becoming a great spouse is the dream of many married people. That's mine too! But it requires more than just more a wish. It needs inner strength, wisdom, patience, determination and a lot more.
I love my career and my family therefore; I would take up the challenge of striking a balance with work and family.
1.Try to love home management
Marriage is a ministry. It is an institution you enter to serve. And serving comes with challenges. If you don't love being a parent or home management generally, the stress of housework will kill your joy. Rather than running home from work with joy, you would see it as return to captivity.
As a career person, you must make up your mind to love your home and give your best to it. Home management, especially for wives, is an art. And just like the artist loves his work or pieces of art, you must wake up daily loving your home, and be desirous of giving everything for it.
Although surely times we will feel lazy but I really do enjoying doing housework and tidying up the house together with my husband and I make it known to him too. Seeing him helping me sharing the load of housework make me love him more and not feel that I am alone.
2. Get organized!
A lot of the stress at home comes from not being organized. It is important to have the habit of putting things away and keeping the house tidy during the week if you only have more time in the weekend to tidy up the house.
Make the kids go to bed at an appointed time. And early to bed, early to rise! Let them get used to the pattern. This will help you free some time to attend to yourself, your spouse and perhaps prepare for next day work.
3. Wake up early
Try to wake up 20 to 30 minutes before your kids - yes mum and dads. It helps you to settle down and partly prepared ahead of them. This creates time for quick personal time then ready for breakfast together or quick house check.
4. Let your spouse and family know your limitations
This is necessary where only one spouse works or is relatively more occupied than the other. You must effectively draw a line between what you can do and what you cannot.
Let everybody understand the limitations you have concerning your availability at home. If your spouse and family understand the nature of your work, it keeps unnecessary friction away and prevents unrealistic expectations at home.
The home is a place of refuge; a place of comfort and the pivotal figures to direct affairs who every one looks up to for inspiration is the father or husband (and in his absence, the wife). But when children seldom see their working parents, they come up with different kinds of attitudes.
When kids or your partner see you as never available or inaccessible, different kinds of assumptions follows, which leads to resentment.
Spouses and children who scarcely see their partners because of their busy business or work schedules can mistake this to mean one is uncaring, selfish, not good enough to confide in, or relate with.
Spouses should learn to carry their partners along. Let them know your weaknesses or limitations. Everyone have weaknesses. But the greatest weakness is not accepting that you have one. If time and availability is your limitation, you cannot improve your marriage by carrying on as if all shall be well.
5. Practice time management
Make efforts to sit down and review and plan your schedules on daily and weekly basis to ascertain how they impact on your effectiveness at work and the quality of your role as a mother/ father or husband/wife.
6. Delegate some of your work
Running a sweet and happy home involves a lot of emotional, mental, spiritual and physical sacrifices and inputs. No single person can ever fulfill this responsibility. It essentially takes the husband and the wife, together with their children to have a happy one, with each playing their roles.
Build a team at home. Let everybody be united and assign roles to each other. Just because you want to be seen as a good husband or wife does not mean you should get enmeshed in work can easily delegate.
This is where some couples go for maids. If you can afford it, go for it but in agreement with your partner, and together choose one that suits your personality, values and expectations.
I am now searching for a new maid as the previous had finished her contract. I am now very lucky to have my mum come assist us once in a while when things get hectic. We are so lucky as Singaporeans I think to be able to hire maids easily and have our parents fairly close by to help out when needed.
Having others help you ensures that nothing suffers or not attended when you are not available. This too helps you to direct attention to your partner when you return.
7. Set special time aside for your partner and family
This is the most important one. One of the greatest ways to kill love in marriage is to neglect your family.
Every career person who desires a great home must create time for his/her partner. Use your spare time to make up for lost time.
Do you still find time to go out with your spouse (and children too) for recreation? Life does not only consist of work - from office to bed; and from home to work, without recreation. What is the use of having all the money and success in the world when you have no love ones to enjoy it with?
There are indeed several things we could do to make our marriages sweet whilst we enjoy our career. Remember, it is not just having a partner or a wonderful job that makes an extraordinary marriage, but the dedication of your time and efforts to make that marriage work.
"To love being married and love your work is one thing; to love and be committed to those whom we marry is quite another"
