Dr. Doom - that is a wonderful update and I'm so happy for the both of you! :D
I can't wait to see how this plays out for you both. After reading your blog and the work history (which is highly entertaining btw), I've been rooting for your successful journey to FIRE - and how awesome that the spouse is joining you!
Thanks, FG! I still can hardly believe it. This weekend we're starting to get into the nuts and bolts of downsizing, and she's genuinely interested and excited about the process. Such an amazing thing to be doing this 100% together.
It's hard for me to remember that as I become more comfortable with someone, I let some of the most important fundamentals of communication drop away-- when really, that's when I need them most!
This is very insightful and is certainly part of what happened with us. Sometimes we make incorrect assumptions that our partner is on the same wavelength on certain topics so there's no need to have a discussion, and it's difficult to find out later that you were wrong.
@EV, yeah, I am sort of prepared for a bit of backpedaling at some point, especially if her work-grind lets up and she starts to think her job is 'tolerable' again, but even so, the biggest hurdle has been cleared and we have better communication on this subject now, so I'm totally sure that we'll keep moving in this direction. She was SO completely pissed at not being able to have visits with our nephews due to weekend work (which she values above just about anything else in life, btw) that I'm hopeful that any potential changes will be slight.
>>be as firm about setting reasonable boundaries at work as possible.
We're trying. It's a constant challenge. Much of the weekend stuff relates to a) outages and b) scheduled work that can only be performed off-hours due to service availability requirements (It's IT-type stuff). It's very difficult to say no to this sort of stuff because it's not strictly project work, and in addition, since she's "management" now, it's simply harder push back. Agree with your point though, 100%, I support her pushing back - just not sure how successful it's going to be. She could always take the hard line "Well, if you schedule this work on the weekend, it just ain't getting done" approach but that makes for a hostile environment. At that point, she's picking poisons.