Oil Rig Life: Keeping the Love Alive

When you live an oil rig life you tend to find that relationships at home can get difficult to manage. We all get lonely, wives get lonely for their rig hand husbands and rig hands get lonely for their wives. Over the years my hubby and I have found ways to help with the loneliness/ It is rough at first for some couples but if you value your relationship then you find ways to make it work.

Here are a few things we have done over the years:

• Surprising each other: There have been numerous little surprises over the years but there is one in particular that stands out in my memory. It was Valentines Day, a day we never seem to be able to share, and my husband was working fairly close to home. It was only about a 4 hour drive to go see him. So I dropped the kids off with grandma for the day and headed up to visit my hubby. I left home at about 4 in the morning, when I got close to his motel I called him as this has always been our morning ritual. I acted like nothing was different, like I was at home caring for our family. You can only imagine his surprise when about a half hour later I was knocking on his room door.
• Calling every day: It has always been a daily part of our lives to talk to each other at least once a day. Generally my husband will phone in the morning, when he gets in from his shift, in the afternoon I call and wake him up and then he will call one last time in the evening to talk to the kids and say good night.
• Being together when the rig is down: When the rig shuts down for spring break up and then again in the fall to wait for freeze up we make sure and spend as much time together as possible. In fact during those times we rarely ever do anythign alone. We believe in keeping our relationship strong and growing together and not apart.

We are both waiting for the time when we can sit back in our rocking chairs and reflect on our lives. When this time comes we want to make sure we know each other and still share them same interests. with rig life it is easy to fall in to a habit of living seperate lives, if this happens you may find yourself growing apart and losing interest in one another. Take the time now to keep your love alive so you will not regret it later.