ON Sunday evenings, when many 9-to-5ers are home resting up for the beginning of the work week, Brian Mulhern leaves his wife and daughter in Lawrence, Kan., and heads for the airport to fl y to his second home in New York City. He’ll put in a full week doing marketing for a fi nancial-services firm in New Jersey and won’t return to Kansas until late Friday night.
At over 1,200 miles in each direction, it amounts to an unusually strenuous commute, but it works for Mulhern, an advertising veteran, and his wife, Laura Hines.
“I like working in advertising, and New York City is the best place to pursue my career,” he says, noting that most of his friends and family are in the tristate area. Meanwhile, his wife has a tenure-track job teaching at the University of Kansas law school that she doesn’t want to give up to move east.
While couples with jobs that are a plane ride and a time zone apart might seem an unusual setup, it’s getting less and less so.
Commuter marriages like Mulhern’s are on the rise, according to a number of indicators.
“With so many job changes and two-career couples, the chances that people will have a commuter relationship for at least a couple of years is skyrocketing,” says pollster and Burson-Marsteller p.r. CEO Mark Penn, who takes note of the trend in his new book, “Microtrends.”
The number of married Americans living apart for reasons other than marital separation jumped 30 percent from 2000 to 2005, estimates Gregory Guldner, director of the Web-based Center for the Study of Long Distance Relationships.
And a growing number are willing to consider such a setup, suggests a recent survey by the executive recruiting firm Korn-Ferry International. A walloping 70 percent of respondents said they would defer job relocation for extreme commuting – which along with intense daily commutes, includes traveling long distances to work each week and returning home on the weekends. And the vast majority of employers said they were open to such an arrangement, rather than forcing employees to relocate.
A number of factors figure into the shift. Penn notes that at a time when numerous job shifts over the course of a career have become the norm, people see jobs as less permanent, and are thus less inclined to relocate for one, whether its their own or their spouse’s. Meanwhile, airfares have dropped to the point where weekly round-trip travel is financially feasible.
The spiking number of working women in dual-income households is a major factor as well, notes gender expert and Sarah Lawrence professor Susan Shapiro-Barash.
“Today’s women are trading in the same currency as men,” she says. “They are becoming increasingly more ambitious about their own careers,” and are thus less likely to make the traditional sacrifices for their husbands’.
This was certainly a factor for Mulhern and Hines.
“Laura clerked for a judge, worked for a large corporate law firm, then spent seven years on faculty acquiring tenure,” he says. “After climbing such a mountain, she would have been foolish to give all that up.”
Penn suggests that most commuter spouses see their situation as a short-term solution. But an increasing number of commuters aren’t putting an expiration date on the scenario.
Since April, Stuart Udell has made the weekly commute between his home on Long Island, and his job in Scranton, Pa., where he serves as CEO of Penn Foster distance learning schools. And he shows no signs of stopping.
“The situation has worked out very well thus far,” he says, “and it will work well in the long term, as our family has already adjusted. We all agree that our lives are far better.”
Ironically, Udell cites an improvement in the quality of his family time as the main benefit of working away from home all week.
In his old job, he says, “I had been commuting three hours round-trip to New York City every day, so even when I was home, I felt like I wasn’t. The time together with my wife and kids since the change has definitely been more meaningful and enjoyable for the entire family.”
The same way technological advancements have facilitated keeping in touch with work during family time, they also help long-distance families keep in touch during work time, notes Guldner.
He cites hands-free phones as one way separated couples can simulate proximity, completing daily chores while talking. And with the speed and readiness of e-mail, text messaging and digital photography, long-distance relationships can become just as intimate as their geographically close counterparts, he says.
Udell has become one such “Mobile Spouse,” Penn’s term for commuters who rely on technology to maintain closeness with their families. He speaks to his wife three times a day, so they never feel absent from one another.
“We check in once in the morning,” he says, “once midday, and once in the evening to debrief. We also e-mail five to 10 times daily. Technology has definitely helped us stay connected. Even a short text to the kids lets them know I’m thinking of them.”
Mulhern and Hines likewise stay in constant touch.
“We usually talk every morning while I’m getting ready for work, again as Laura is driving to her office, and for long conversations in the evening,” says Mulhern. “I believe we spend more time communicating than any married couple I know.”
Guldner says his research shows that commuter couples have at least as much chance of surviving as conventional couples. The key, he says, is for spouses to remain involved in each other’s daily routine, focusing on “the mundane issues needed to feel interconnected and intimate.”
To make up for lost intimacy of another stripe, Guldner suggests learning the art of “long-distance sex.” He offers tips on the center’s Web site (longdistancerelationships.net), including sharing erotic letters, videos and photographs.
UPS AND DOWNS
While commuter spouses have had to adjust to changes on the home front, employers have had to face this new reality in the workplace. Some employers remain fearful that commuter applicants may be more difficult to manage and miss out on the crucial “hallway/water cooler” culture of the office, says Jeff Hocking, Korn Ferry managing director.
But he’s also seen more employers open up to the notion of commuter applicants, which allows them to draw from a larger applicant pool.
“By offering the option of extreme commuting, employers are seeing that they can attract the best people regardless of where they live,” he says. “And with other employers open to extreme commuters, offering the same benefit allows a company to compete for talent.”
And, asks workplace expert Joel Zeff, “Does it really matter where the employee lives? As long as the situation works on both sides, it shouldn’t be an issue for either.”
It may also be, as Penn suggests in “Microtrends,” that commuter spouses are the most attractive applicants because of their increased efficiency. With fewer distractions, employees away from their families can be “furiously productive.”
Indeed, Mulhern has already seen his increased industriousness pay off at the office.
“Unlike my colleagues with families in New York, I can work as late as needed. And from my employer’s perspective, the benefit is that they own me during the week.”
And choosing to stick with his job over living with his family is an indicator of loyalty, he notes.
The choice, of course, is highly personal, and the weekly commute is not for everyone.
Warren Zanes, who commuted for 18 months between his home in Montclair, NJ, and his job as director of educational programs at Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, found the divide made for an unhealthy lifestyle.
“From my perspective,” he says, ‘I was neither fish nor foul both at home and at work. And as for my family, they were forced to deal with constant disruption. The moment my children got used to my being home, I left. The moment they got used to being gone, I came home.”
Judy Crater, whose husband, Richard, commuted for three years between their home in Massachusetts and his work at New York University, couldn’t bear the loneliness.
“We spoke on the phone every night,” she says, “but there’s just no replacement for the spontaneous conversation between married people.”
The low point came on Sept. 11, 2001, when Crater found herself separated from her husband and children in New York City. After hours on the phone, she managed to track them down. “But I felt incredibly guilty that I was so far away,” she says, “especially knowing what they had to go through alone.”
Even happy commuters, like Mulhern, admit the hardships. Like Zanes, he has missed out on family milestones.
“Last month my daughter took her first steps on a Tuesday, and I had to wait until Friday to see her toddle,” he says. “It was really disappointing.”
And then there’s the cost – Mulhern budgets $1,400 a month – as well as the logistical nightmares.
“The unpredictability of traveling by air can be hell,” he says. “And La Guardia is the worst of all airports. If the weather is bad, flights can be delayed for hours. I’ve gotten into Kansas as late as 4 a.m. on Saturday, which really cuts into 42 hours of family time.”
Udell’s drive is just as uncertain.
“My longest ride home was for a holiday dinner,” he says. “When I finally pulled into the driveway, I saw three generations of women – my mother, mother-in-law, wife and daughter – waiting on the porch with their arms crossed.”
On the other hand, like commuters of all stripes, they find ways to make the grind more bearable.
Mulhern, for instance, has befriended the airline flight crews and staff at La Guardia.
“They’ll rush me through security and give me extra care,” he says.
And the bartender at his favorite La Guardia restaurant always has a glass of white wine and mozzarella sticks waiting there when Mulhern arrives.
“It’s as if ‘Cheers’ were set in an airport,” he says, “and I’m Norm.”