Both Sides Now

The part where I get confused in all this is this…when this couple got together, one of them was a truck driver. Everyone in the relationship was aware that the driver was gone for days or weeks at a time as their job dictated. If it wasn’t an issue before the relationship started, why did it become one after. What factor changes after you say “I do” that wasn’t there before?

As a spouse of a truck driver, and a driver myself, there has been stretches of a few years where I have stayed home and worked in an office or drove locally. So I have the benefit of having been on both sides of this equation. He pulls out on Sunday evening and gets home Saturday morning. We talk several times a day on the phone, and once in awhile he gets by the house for a few hours. During the week, my time is mine to schedule, but on the weekends I only make tentative plans until I see what day he’s going to get home. If it turns out he can’t get home then I have to decide if my plans are something that I need to go ahead and do without him or if I want to stay home rather than go alone.

I suppose the moral would be that if you’re going to be in a relationship with a truck driver you need to have a life that is flexible to mesh with their erratic schedule. With today’s technology…cell phones, video chats, etc. it’s cheap to stay in touch, which helps alleviate the some of the loneliness that the separation brings (though a cell phone can’t warm your feet at night). You have to be enough of your own person to give the extra it takes to make a relationship like this work. No relationship is 50-50, and if you think it is then I’m very sorry for you. At any given time in any relationship one person is always giving more than the other. This is especially true when you’re involved with a truck driver. There’s always uproar in your schedule when your driver is home. It’s inconvenient and stressful, and a lot has to be jammed into those few hours. You have to be very careful here because it’s very easy to resent this person that you love and pledged your life to simply because for 5 or 6 days a month they want your attention to be on them and not on your regularly schedule programming.

So consider carefully before going into a relationship with a truck driver, and be honest with yourself and them. Are you truly the type of person that can cope with only having telephone contact for long periods of time? Can you be a strong support and not make every little thing become high drama in order to be the center of attention, and cause more stress in an already stressful life?

It takes a special type of person to be the spouse of truck driver, and my hat is off to everyone who stands support for those that keep everything from your toilet paper to the gas you put in your car moving over the highways of America.