r/MedSpouse • u/Quesoman23 • 4m ago
How do I balance my partner's stress handling as well as my own needs?
My girlfriend is doing residency right now, she's in her last year of family med. We're both in our 30s.
It feels like she has two modes - stress at work and a resulting disassociating from life. She comes home from work and immediately escapes by playing video games during pretty much every waking hour outside of work. She'll put in 200 hours over a couple of weeks.
Her mom, who is staying with us, and I do 90% of the chores like dishes, laundry, and food prep.
On inpatient and night shift rotations, it's definitely like this. Even during other rotations, this pattern is there.
I get it. I'm a gamer myself... but I also feel like I want to connect with her, do things with her, and talk about life and the future (we do have things to figure out) and there's no space for that.
I don't know... is this normal? How do I support her while also considering my own needs? How do I distinguish real residency stress from her reaction to life while under stress? I've had stressful jobs working 60+ hour weeks... but I feel like I still managed my time outside in a certain way - a lot of me time, but also doing chill things with my partner and friends/family. I'm not sure if residency is a different kind of brutality.