One of the things I’ve always struggled with being married to a chef, is not comparing our relationship or our family to others, especially to those who have a more traditional work schedule (home in the evenings and on weekends.)

Quick tangent on that . . . is there really a job that is 9-5 (or somewhere close) any more?  Out of all my friends, I only have a handful whose husbands work a traditional schedule like that.  All the others are working one or more jobs with different hours, just like my chef/husband. (Although maybe not quite as many hours.)  OK, tangent over.

Comparing ourselves to others will only make us frustrated and upset.  Really.  What good is it going to do you?  Social media makes it so easy to see what everyone is doing all the time! 

Our chefs are rarely home on the weekends and in the evenings and that’s OK.  That’s our reality.  It’s just different. 

There’s not a whole lot we can do about it, so instead of comparing our relationships and families to others, let’s embrace what we have. 

• Let’s be excited that we don’t have to wait in line to see Santa because we can go on a Monday morning when everyone else is at work or school.
• Let’s be happy that when we send our chefs to the grocery store, they know what to buy and aren’t helpless.
• Let’s enjoy the fact that we can go out on a midweek date and actually get a reservation somewhere we’d like to eat.
• Let’s be thankful that when we use the wrong wine to braise the turkey dark meat and almost ruin Thanksgiving, our chef can fix it.  (Blog post on that next year . . . Ugh!!)

There are so many wonderful things about being married to a chef.  Let’s focus on those and not on what we wish we had because we’re comparing ourselves to others.

Does anyone else struggle with this?

From one chef’s wife to another,

You can view other days in this series here.