Weekdays, Barbara Haas commutes from her Valparaiso, Ind., condo to her Loop office. The trip is about 90 minutes by train, but pales in comparison to her weekend commute. Her home and husband, Norbert, are in Pittsburgh, where the couple grew up, married and reared two daughters before Barbara’s career guided her out of town more than 11 years ago.
Today, at 57, Haas has few regrets about her commuter marriage. “We merely co-existed in the same house in Pittsburgh,” she says, referring to the years she spent as a mother and a bank executive, while Norbert started and ran his own business. “Now, when we’re together, we’re really together. We have a rule that we don’t work when we’re together, and because I’m alone during the week I can work until 2 a.m. to get everything done.” Now she is president of Progeni, a fledgling subsidiary of NIPSCO Industries, based in Merrillville, Ind.
And although commuter marriages apparently are on the rise, the couple has met with skepticism and disapproval from friends and acquaintances along the way. “The females say he probably treats me like a date and I’m so lucky because I don’t have anyone to clean up after and cook for,” Barbara says. “The men look at it and feel sorry for me,” she says.
In a recent survey of 189 companies by relocation consulting firm Windham International of New York, 13 percent of transferred executives were not accompanied by their spouses, up dramatically from 7 percent just two years ago. Part of the reason, Windham officials say, is more spouses are employed when their partners are asked to make a move. “With dual career families, many are financially dependent on the two incomes,” says Ilene Dolins, senior vice president for the firm. And if an executive is transferred abroad, many spouses can’t legally work at all in the new country, she adds.
Even for highly paid executives like Barbara and Norbert Haas, the dual-city lifestyle means they not only pay for flying to see each other a few times
each month, but they also maintain two homes, pay two cleaning services and get hit with other double expenses. Barbara feels the couple still comes out ahead compared to the opportunities for her career in Pittsburgh, but the lifestyle takes its toll in other ways.
“I feel horribly guilty that he’s responsible for our elderly relatives in Pittsburgh, though he says he doesn’t mind,” she says. There are other sacrifices, including attending untold social functions alone. Having a sense of humor about the experience seems to help. “My family is fairly certain we’d drive each other nuts if we lived together. (Norbert) even said we’ll probably need a re-entry period when we hit retirement, and the kids suggested side-by-side duplexes.” Her advice to other commuter spouses: Be careful planners. “We schedule way in advance to make this all work,” she says.
Sarah Read, 41, and a partner with the Chicago law firm Sidley & Austin, flies every weekend to St. Louis, then drives another 90 minutes to Columbia to reach her husband, David, and the couple’s two children, ages 9 and 12. Because of David’s flexible schedule as a professor at the University of Missouri, the arrangement allows them to avoid most outside child care. “I built a practice over 15 years,” Sarah says of the family’s decision to live in two places. Of David’s career she says: “You don’t ask someone to give up their life because you have enjoyable work.” The Reads try to keep family ties strong by letting their children vent frustrations about the situation as well as positive thoughts, and Sarah exchanges journal entries with her youngest at week’s end.
Not everyone sails through the miles of separation unscathed. Dolins tells of some spouses who become bitter about transfers, and she says many long-term separations just don’t work.
Likewise, a leading Chicago divorce attorney says she is seeing more people in commuter marriages, and some of them are turning up as clients. “It takes people a long time to admit a marriage isn’t working,” says Joy Feinberg of Feinberg & Barry, noting a transfer notice usually just starts a ball rolling that would have eventually rolled anyway. Clearly, though, stressful jobs in far-flung locations will almost certainly add unwanted stress to a relationship, she says.
