There should be a support group for people with spouses in PhD programs. If there isn’t one already, I should create it.
Being the wife of a PhD student can be a lonely, frustrating experience. If you’ve had a spouse in school, perhaps you can relate, especially if it was/is a demanding program. I hardly see John, and when I do, he’s usually stressed out about something.
I make meals that I sometimes don’t get to eat with him. I sit in his ‘home office,’ quietly doing my own thing while he does homework just so I can spend time with him at all.
It’s not easy. Sometimes it’s really hard. I understand that being a PhD student is difficult (probably more difficult than I could hack), but being the spouse of one is hard too.
I can relate. Chris is in nursing school which is incredibly demanding from day one. Typically he is gone all day and then goes to work until midnight. If he only has school that day then he comes home and wants to nap for a few hours and then he has to read a billion pages, and/or is on the computer doing homework until all hours of the night. Throw in a three-year old and a pregnant momma to boot and you have a fun house! I hope things lighten a bit for you but think of the success this will bring your family and the time it will free up in your future and the opportunities it may provide you. That is what I am banking on!!! Ahhhh!!!
You should start the group, and have a night out once a month or something!
Thanks for the support, Amy. You and I should form our own support group.
Eden – I should, shouldn’t I?
Holli jo, I was just searching for a PhD spousal support group when i found your posting. It is super hard being a PhD spouse with two children. It is extremely lonely, and frustrating, you are correct. I think there are probably many more spouses out there that feel the same way. Wish somehow we could get some help. I know it will all be over soon, but the loneliness is almost intolerable at times.
If anyone is out there still, I can relate! Actually, it has been 5 long years and my husband is about ready to give up. He has switched his dissertation topic 3 times, and now his internship may not count due to lack of supervision hours…too much detail, I know, but I’m soooo tired of it all, and with 3 young kids (6 years, 3 years, and 11 months), I’m tired of the student life.
If anyone knows of a support group for PhD spouses, please post. My wife has been a “full time” PhD student for going on seven years and I’m broke, lonely and ready to call it quits.
I whole heartedly agree, there is a huge need for more resources for PHD spouses. I was searching the internet for info and found your post. My husband of five years is doing an intensive summer program PHD whilst teaching as a full time faculty in the school year. He is doing the coursework in the US and we live in the middle east so being apart is only really adding to the stress. If I get to speak to him on the phone for 5 mins every two days I count myself lucky! I am sure it is worth it in the long run, but I have been wondering how many marriages break from the stress a phd places upon them.
It’s been 7.5 years for my husband and he is STILL not done. He is working a full-time job and trying to finish. It’s extremely difficult for us both and I just don’t want him to give up, he’s so close but I can’t say anything that will make him work harder or faster or be less of a perfectionist. It’s been very hard on our relationship, and i’m also looking for some support.
my hubby just started about 8 month ago and i am frustrated…..reading your posts as in how long it can go on just makes me really really loose all hope…………bye the way i just created a support group on facebook and would love to see people joining it………………………http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=115761158464890&v=app_2373072738#!/group.php?gid=115761158464890
my hubby just started about 8 month ago and i am frustrated…..reading your posts as in how long it can go on just makes me really really loose all hope…………bye the way i just created a support group on facebook and would love to see people joining it………………………it is called support group for spouses of phd students……………………
Hi all,
I was wondering how many of the spouses of PhD students are working. My husband is in PhD and will be in third year soon. We got married while he was in his Masters program. I am the one who pays all the bills(rent, insurance, food, gas, internet..) and is mostly responsible for keeping the house clean as well as cooking.
I am tired. When I married my husband, I hoped to have a comfortable life. Now I feel he is mooching off of me, and I cannot help but lose some of the respect I had for him.
I hope the PhD will pay off in the long run, but with not too many job postings around and salaries for PhDs not being much better than Masters, I am wondering if this is worth the effort.
Just venting here, and looking for some support.
Thanks,
What about a support group for mothers of PHDs?
it has been expensive to support a son for so many years of study, the university pays just for survival. He never has time to come home. When is he going to have a full time job? a life without exams and homeworks, I don’t know
After reading your posts, I am glad he is not married .
What about a support group for mothers of PHDs?
it has been expensive to support a son for so many years of study, the university pays just for survival. He never has time to come home. When is he going to have a full time job? a life without exams and homework I don’t know
After reading your posts, I am glad he is not married .
This is the first time I have ever felt the need to post to someone’s blog but this just hit me in the stomach. My husband is 7.5 years in and has twice ‘missed’ his self-imposed deadline on submitting and frankly 2.5 chapters out of 4 in, there isn’t enough for him to submit. I am working a job I hate in a country not my own to support us and instead of him getting on with it he has slowed into a comfortable groove with periodic complaints about the location. I’m trying so hard to support him but am angrier and angrier. Even talking about it doesn’t seem to have lit a fire under him. We have limited support here so I simmer and my husband bobs along occasionally checking our bank account and commenting that it’s so nice to see money in it. I love him but I feel like he is not holding up his end of the bargain (mine was to keep us afloat financially, his was to finish writing and submit). I feel like my choices are to continue the way we are or become his Mom checking his homework on a daily basis. I don’t think our relationship is going to crack under the stress but I have less certainty than I once did…
Ten years to do it – our cleaner weighed it all up “but Jim, just think of the money once she has it” – o’h she wont get a salary rise, it is for the “personal acheivement” – the cleaner was really really confused!
This is unlikely to make anyone (except maybe me) feel better. My husband and I got married 15 years ago, we were both finishing our Bachelors degrees. In the past 15 years I have lived in 3 states and 2 countries, while my husband has done his Master’s degree, PhD, post-doc, and 2nd post doc. Currently we are living overseas while he is working in a very prestigious place. Meanwhile I am nearly 40, and have started my career over so many times that I have run out of ways to reinvent myself.
My husband recently interviewed for a tenure track position in our home country. The job sounded as though it had been written for him, and the months of painful waiting and wondering began yet again. After nearly 10 months and 2 interviews, we heard that they had made an offer to someone who is only ABD. Needless to say we were both devastated. I desperately want to go home. I want my kids to be able to see their grandparents more then once every 2 or 3 years. I want to support my husband in his disappointment but I find that my grief about the difficult situation we are in is keeping me from being able to move on. I may have walked into this relationship knowing what he wanted to do, but I never had any idea that 15 years later we would still be living like graduate students.
I have lived the Pollyanna “Bloom where you are planted philosophy” I have “bucked up” and found new jobs to pay the rent and buy the groceries, I love my husband, but I find myself desperately wanting to turn back the clock and make a different decision. I do not think I can face another year of the academic job search, and there are very few people who can relate to the special kind of hell reserved for the spouse of a PhD student/graduate who is struggling to find a job.
Does anyone here live in Dallas, Tx? if so, let’s start one.
Just reading these posts has helped me. :0)
My wife has been in her program for thirteen years but, there is light at the end of the tunnel – she has to be finished next spring. This sounds wonderful but it has cost me dearly because as every day closer we get to that magical deadline, the more stressed-out she gets.
I cook, clean, take care of the house and yard, work full-time and take care of the kids at night so she can work on a dissertation that I have come to detest. Draft after draft, I feel more alone than before. I’m so tired of going to bed alone; having your spouse at your side matters in a marriage. But I cannot say a word. My place is to suffer in silence.
Someone said before that this is a special kind of hell. It is. And, I’m ready for it to end. I just know it won’t pay off in the end as jobs around here are impossible to get unless you know the right person so it will be personal goal of hers when she finishes. Along the way, I have suffered greatly – alone and in silence.
I can relate. Sometimes I feel like I don’t get the attention I want. It also sucks because I’m a nurse and work nights. I should probably start a support group in atlanta.
We are in our 6th year of my husband’s PhD and he finally got a full time job this year, while he tries to finish his degree at night. We have a 5-year-old and a 2.5-year-old. I am working 3 jobs to support us and for him to pay back the students loans he took so that he could be working exclusively on his degree in anthropology for the first 5 years. He went back for this PhD at age 30. He has a therapist now who is supposed to help him finish the degree this year. I went with him to the therapist while a friend watched our kids last week. The therapist told me I should start therapy and get on medication for anxiety. How is it that I am the constant casualty of his “noble pursuit”? His parents pushed him to get the degree but have barely helped financially and won’t help now either. I must say that he is a really good father to our kids, but I feel like I won’t ever forgive him for using me as his financier. There are lots of marriages that have fallen apart for lesser things.
My husband and i have been married for almost 13 years. In that time he completed his PhD, found a tenure track position and has had tenure now for 3 years. At every step of our journey i kept thinking that the next step would offer less stress and things would become easier. I have never been right. Still, every day i hear about how much work he still has to get done, how many deadlines he has to meet. He works everyday. The only vacation we have ever taken was our honeymoon! Some weekends we get lucky and he burns out and spends “family” time with me and our son. But that means we always get a tired and stressed version of him to spend time with. I now feel like this will never end. I do sometimes wonder if i would have chosen this if i had known just how difficult it is to be a non-academic spouse of an academic.
I would love to find a support group in Ontario, Canada….
So sorry if i haven’t offered any hope to those still working on the dissertations…
I wish this group was more current, but reading everyone’s replies has helped. We never really fought before but now we fight more than ever. He is angry and frustrated all the time, and all I do is try to pick up after him and keep things somewhat organized. He asked me to make a business call for him tonight while he is in class and I can’t even find the office phone to make the call. He made us go down to one car so the budget would work better, but that has just added more frustration. I don’t really know this pseudo-monster that the PhD program has unleashed. Sometimes I think that if he went back overseas as a contractor that would be a better hell than this, and believe me, that wasn’t easy at all. But it was better than this.
Hi, my name is Devin and I totatlly agree. My man is getting his French degree from UofM and is ALWAYS stressed and stuff but when it comes time for me, he ain’t got NO time. We plan to start a family soon but I don’t know if I feel like he gonna be able to give me and my kids (I already have 3) the time they deserve. And then on the weekends, he wants to hang with his girls (Kendra, Mikela and Ross…ain’t nobody got time for that). Wish me luck but I don’t know if I can keep this up!
I wish there were more recent posts. . I just got married last december, and despised all the time away my husband spent messing with his masters. . I sucked it up and supported him. He told me he wanted his phd and I questioned the idea, but he assured me he found a program he was accepted into that was “designed” for adults with families and that he could work and fulfill his dream… the harsh reality has hit now that he has enrolled and is away at orientation.. whoever said this was designed for families must have never had one, and must have had the luxury of 0 financial responsibilities!
I am conflicted, and scared of what this is going to do to our relationship, I am the sole provider, I have a son, and I did not sign up for this life at all. I am so frustrated! My husband comes home this week.. I should be supportive and happy for him, but instead I want to tell him to quit now before more money and life is spent down the drain just to have a title of doctor? I dont see a financial difference between his masters he has, vs a phd?
Hi everyone! I’d like to start a FB support group for us! I don’t want to space to be used for constant complaining, but perhaps for how to best support our spouses and talk about what we can do to make sure our own needs get met as well.
I would love to have a support group on FB, so if you start one please post it here! I think it would be very popular, and we could even have spouses who have been through it to help us too.
To Jami – I don’t know how I missed your post. Maybe because it was the end of the semester and I was too busy trying to keep things going…..What is his masters in vs. phd? And is he getting it somewhere besides where you live? That would be really hard. I went through a period where we just didn’t get along because I was too angry to be supportive, and I think he knew it. But then I realized that I wasn’t doing anything but adding fuel to the fire, so I made the decision to give 100% to the marriage. It’s hard for sure. I still don’t like it, but at least I’m not trying to be spiteful anymore. I think we’ve been married longer than you – 8 years when he started the program, 9 years now. Give us an update on how it is going. I can’t imagine going through a PhD at the beginning of our marriage with kids already ……
HAS ANYONE HAD THIS PROBLEM? They told him they would count 12 credits from his JD and LLM toward his PHD but now they are saying, “Oops, sorry, the university won’t let us”. So that would mean almost a whole year more school work 😦 But then the department came back and said, well, they don’t audit the credits, so we’re going to give them to you anyway???? I told my husband I WANT THAT IN WRITING so it can’t come back to bite us…..has anyone had this happen? I don’t want him to get to ABD and then have this come back on us. ARGH.
OK everyone, I created a FB group for us. You can find it here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/657476167615995/
If the link doesn’t work, the name of the group is Spouses and Partners of PhD Students. If you have any trouble you can find me on FB as Sabrina Bahir.
Has anyone stayed home and took care of children while spouse was in phd program? I currently have a 40+ hrs a week and solely taking care of my 17th month old. I’m mentally exhausted. My husbands program does not allow him the extra time to help with family obligations. Trying to see what others have done to make it through.