How The First Rule of Fight Club Helped Me Cope With So Much Business Travel

People who travel for business have it made…at least that’s what my wife would have you believe, and I have a sneaking suspicion she’s not alone in thinking that. What I didn’t realize until recently is just how far from the truth people’s perceptions are. Not long before we made the move to California we went as a family to the gym and decided we would put the kids in the babysitting room for a little so we could go and sit in the hot tub. It was great. My wife loved it, going on about how long it had been since she’d been in a hot tub but what followed made me do a double take. She said, “you must do this all the time.”

Uh…what?

What my wife thinks I’m doing when I travel for work

Not exactly….Now I’m not going to lie. I’ve had some quality meals while on the road but most of the time those meals celebrated working some absurd amount of hours over multiple months of a project and always involved spending more hours after work with people I already spent too much time with already.

Flaunting the good times makes things even worse for you if you’re implementing tighter budgets at home. Somehow “I didn’t pay for it” doesn’t work as well as you might think to reduce the dirty looks you get when your significant other who doesn’t travel for work thinks you live the high life 4 days/week.

It took a few times trying to share a couple of bright spots on a couple of lengthy projects before I realized what I had to do…I had to start applying the first rule of fight club to my work trips.

If your spouse stays home with raise the children full-time, this rule applies double for you.

You do NOT talk about fun on work trips.

If either of those children happen to be in the “terrible two” phase, the only things you should be saying are “thank you” and “how can I help?”

As funny as it sounds, everyone’s happier when everyone’s equally miserable. Go figure.