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Host: Murry Norton (MN)

Guest: Dr Roger Henderson (RH)

MN: Hello and welcome to webchats, it's very good of you to join us. Here's a phrase for you, that you may not have heard before, 'we're living together, apart' or we're living apart, together'; they come to the same thing. There's a new report out today from a top survey that does say that couples are just not getting any quality time together and that their work related life is in danger of destroying their relationship. We have the author of that report, Dr Roger Henderson who joins us here today, nice to have you with us, thanks for joining us.

MN: Now, you're the author of this report, I guess it's not really a surprise is it?

RH: No, it's not.

MN: But it is a surprise just how the figures stack up. Because it's quite frightening when you realise it's up to two hours per night that we're spending in separate rooms, 8.6 million people suffering from this across the UK, that's an awful lot of people.

RH: It is. It's not a surprise that people are busy, there's no great shock there, what was a surprise to me was just how much work is polluting our home life, and the effect that's having on people. And by their own admission, spending far less time at home with their partners, despite the fact they recognise the damage that's doing to their relationships, and that's what's really come across in the report. That it's having a detrimental effect on people's relationships, and long-term it's probably not sustainable, and that's the thing you've got to address.

MN: Is it that we don't notice, because we're used to each other? You get into a routine, come home, switching the telly on, reading the paper, logging on when you get home, so we get used to it slowly. It's a creeping thing almost, isn't it?

RH: Yes, like a creeping paralysis. I think there's a difference between routine and rut. I think what this survey has shown is a lot of people in rut, almost by default, almost without realising, and the point of today and this survey I suppose is finding ways to then get back out of that rut, rediscover you relationship and actually reduce your risk of going down the path of divorce and relationship break-up. Which, let's not forget, in this country is one of the greatest in Europe. And that's not without reason, that's because so many of us are not communicating as well as we should be.

MN: And we've got, let's face it, the longest working hours in Europe.

RH: We work longer than any other European country.

MN: There's got to be some correlation?

RH: No question about it in my mind. I don't think there's actually been any direct studies comparing work hours and divorce rates in the UK but in my mind, as a doctor sitting behind my desk, there's no question that that is a direct correlation.

MN: Craig and his partner are just about to have a baby, they've been married for five years, and it's been blissful up until now. Craig says, 'How can we ensure that we're not going to be wondering round like couple of zombies whose complete lives revolve round the child?' If they do they won't be the first!

RH: They won't! And the first thing I've got to say is you are going to be wondering round like a couple of zombies, so prepare for that! I've been there, got the T-shirt. After five years, I had my first child. The important thing is to accept that life is going to change. But you can then plan for that so it should come as shock. You can then find time, even if it's five or ten minutes, every day to say, yep, still here, still with you, still the same, we've been overtaken temporarily by this event in our life but we're still the same people that we were. It's when people get completely consumed by children that problems arise, and the dad usually feels a bit pushed out and to one side, feels a bit miffed, and thinks, 'I was always first boss, now I'm second or third boss' and that's difficult. So prepare, plan, and you'll be fine, bearing in mind that that you're going to be tired but it's temporary, your relationship is long term. The child is relatively going to be with you a short time relative to your life. So look at it that way and you'll come through the other side. And it does get better; believe me it does get better.

MN: I guess the other thing is that Craig is going in with his eyes open, he's asking the question, and in asking the question, he's recognising the problem.

RH: He's slightly unusual as a man. Most men think nothing will change. It's a big shock. They will still go to the pub, they'll still come home, lunch will still be on the table, and they can still go to the football match. It ain't like that! This is the biggest thing that will happen to his life, and knowing that he can actually prepare for that accordingly. And also knowing that he's still number one, but that small child is going to need more demands than he does temporarily.

MN: Getting a lot of questions coming through. Quality time we mentioned before. What exactly is quality time? That's the one thing that everybody says.

RH: My definition of quality time is time when you have just the two of you, and one is talking and the other is listening. Because anyone can talk and that happens all the time, but if one is talking and the other is listening and then it reverses and the other talks and the other listens that's quality time. And it's not when you're watching TV, or talking to one of your friends on the telephone, it's when you've got complete confidence with each other and the other is listening. That's quality time, it's just your time and no one else is interrupting or interfering.

MN: You mentioned interruptions and telephones. It's what we do when we get home. We don't make that many calls at work of a personal nature because we're surrounded by people, and probably the employees don't like it. So when we get home, we're on the phone, for the other partner that can be quite off-putting, the same when we open the newspaper or switch on the TV, logging online, and one of the facts we've got is that people spend two hours in different rooms to each other!

RH: As I've said many times you cannot have a decent conversation with your partner through two walls, you've got to actually physically be quite close to each other! But when you look at the fact most of those calls are actually unnecessary, most of those calls are not critical and if you remove the calls that don't have to be made there and then, you actually remove up to 95% of the time free. People say they have no spare time but actually when you look at it hard they've got lots of time but they're just not using that time properly.

MN: Normally there's an imbalance between two people where one is working terribly hard and thinks they're doing it for the right reasons and the other saying they're not getting enough attention. One way or the other. And Glenn is an artist and works in his studio a great deal, as you would as an artist, and his girlfriend doesn't understand and thinks he is using that just as an excuse to ignore her. What can he do to make her understand that's not the case? That he is actually working and he's not ignoring her. He wants to spend some time and reassure her that he cares.

RH: Yes, I think that communication is the absolute key and what you've got to point out is to your girlfriend is that, that is your job, that is what you do for a living but that is completely divorced and separate from your relationship and the two do not overlap. That is what you do to earn money, to bring home the bacon, but your heart is actually with your girlfriend and nowhere else. Because it's a busy job and I'm a busy doctor, that doesn't mean I love my wife any less if I have to do lots of medical things and she understands that because she knows there's no competition or threat. It's not another person, you'd rather not be spending all that time in that job instead of with her, but because you have that job you do it to the best of your ability and when you come home she has your full attention. If she knows that and still says it's not enough, then you might actually have to have a long hard chat and say, 'That's all I can do, I can do no more, if it's not enough we need to look and see where this relationship is going.' But if she knows that there is no threat, and that's the key word, she should be fine.

MN: Elaine from Somerset has got a comment we hear a thousand times over, which is, 'I spend a couple of hours with my husband every evening, he comes in, he switches the television on, he grunts a few times, what can I do to get him to talk to me?'

RH: I think that's my wife in disguise! The obvious thing to say is, switch the TV off. It's absolutely obvious, but don't only switch the TV off, turn the computer off, and turn the mobile phone off, and say, 'OK, talk to me.' So often, and this At Home Society study has shown this, that people actually sharing the same space but not communicating because other stuff is on. Because the TV is on, or the Internet is on, or the phone, so you've actually got to sweep that away. If he then says, 'OK, there's nothing going on, it's just you and me' and he's still grunting, then you might have to say, 'Why are you still grunting? You never used to grunt, is there anything else going on?' So take everything else away, strip it down to the bone and see where that relationship actually is.

MN: Bernice has got a question, 'I work in a very stressful industry, with a long commute so I find it very hard to relax when I get home' You do get very tense with your partner when you get in don't you? Because you've been working all day, and we'll come in a minute to the responsibility of the employee and the employer, but before that let's just deal with this. So do you have any relaxation measures that she could do on the commute, so that by the time she gets home she's in a blissful state of mind?

RH: Yes. Now listen to this because this a tip you will not have heard before, and it will work. When you go to work, about a mile or two miles from your house, you will see mentally, in your mind, a bag by the side of the road. That bag will have work written on it. When you're going to work, you will mentally pick that bag up, and take it with you. You are then in work mode. You're going to work; you're in work mode. When you come home, and this is the important bit, at the same point every single day, you drop that bag off mentally and it stays there. Work has gone; you've left it there and you're now home. The next morning you'll pick that work bag up again. Now that is going to sound extremely daft, you try it for three days Bernice, and you will feel better I promise. It works for me; it works for everyone I've tried it on. It's the best tip you'll ever get and you won't read it in a book.

MN: Great tip! Here Bernice is the one doing the commute, but if someone is listening to this thinking, 'Hey, my partner is like that!" How do you get them to do that? Because then you are just nagging them not to bring work home, and that causes even more stress.

RH: It does, and to some extent you have to give them tips to try but also, maybe say, 'OK, for twenty minutes when you come in, use me as a whipping board, unload, get it off your chest, say everything you've wanted to say to your boss today but you couldn't, I'll sit there and take it then we'll have a drink. Job done, your feeling better, I know the evening is going to be relaxed and we can move on from there.' So get it out of the way early. Not all evening, because that's not fair, but just for twenty minutes, get it out of your system and you're away.

MN: It's almost like getting the work report done and then having the drink. At the end of a long hard day we should do all that. Debbie says we aren't spending enough time with each other, but we have to work, and we all have chores. Are you suggesting we schedule quality time? In other words, we say, right, look at the diary, between that time and that time we'll have quality time together. The way you would schedule a meeting.

RH: Absolutely. It's going to feel very artificial and you're going to feel slightly embarrassed doing it that way but it will work. Sit down and say, 'OK, Thursday at half past six you and I are going to sit down for twenty minutes'. And even if you sit there and think, I don't know what to say, it's a start. And you'll find gradually you'll learn how to speak to each other again and it will start to slowly come. Don't be afraid to be formal. It will become much more informal as time goes by and you get into the habit of saying, OK, at this time of day we have a chat, and it goes from formal to natural. That could take three of four weeks but it will come and your relationship will blossom because of it.

MN: And in terms of spontaneity, it will eventually come to that?

RH: It will, and the daft stuff, the cards, flowers, the odd little gift, it will be really appreciated.

MN: Hayley's got a problem that a lot of people will have. A busy, executive partner, every time Hayley sits down with her husband, and it drives her to distraction, the Blackberry will go off, the mobile will go off, and he says these calls are really important and he can't ignore them. What's Hayley to do about this? Apart from ripping the damn things up! Sticking her heel straight through it..

RH: That's one option! I'm late to meet the indispensable man. They don't exist. So if those calls are as important as that, that guy has either created the universe or is it's something I don't know about. So he has to, for at least half an hour, it will wait, it will always wait. Have that have an hour off where you say, 'Now we are going to talk, I'll set my clock if you want but by hook or by crook we are going to talk. If the Blackberry is more important that me we have got a problem.' And anyone who's got a significant input to that relationship is going to say the Blackberry is less important. Easier said that done but it's a real test of a relationship.

MN: Right up and down the United Kingdom tonight you can hear the screaming and the gnashing of teeth from here, as everyone has that heart-to-heart conversation. Jennifer wants to know, onto employers, because al lot of it is down to the employee, the person who takes their job so seriously they're nudging their relationship out of the way as we've just heard, but Jennifer says, 'Why do we Brits work the longest hours in Europe? Is it just our corporate culture that makes us unable to say no, and do we ruin our relationships because of it?

RH: I certainly thing we ruin our relationships because of it and I've made a direct correlation between working hours, lack of communication and relationship problems. As to why we work the longest hours in Europe, I haven't the faintest idea, because you'd think we'd be the most productive of Europe, and we're not, far from it, and I do think it's a corporate thing. There's a slightly macho element to the British working ethos that says the harder you work, the better you are, the more of a man you are, the long hours are a badge of courage. Thinking back to when I was a junior doctor, there was one week that I did a 130 hour week and I slept for 10 hours and you wore it as a badge of courage on your sleeve, isn't that great, aren't I a great man. You're not, you're just exhausted, and you're no good to anybody. So I'm not sure why we work the longest hours, we shouldn't work the longest hours, the government should be doing something about that but they're obviously not. If you're in a job where you have to work that degree of hours you have to ask yourself if it's worth it. Remember this, I've never met a man who's on his deathbed and said to me, 'You know doc, I wish I'd spent more hours in the office'. It doesn't happen and never will.

MN: Patrick wants to know, 'My wife and I are currently having a long distance relationship, she works in Manchester and she works in London, you can imagine the distance between those two, do you have any suggestions for activities we could do together that we could do together that would enhance our time together during those alternate weekends?'

RH: The initial answer is to spend quite a lot of time in bed.

MN: Do you want to elaborate on that?

RH: The important thing is to do something together that you actually enjoy. Long distance relationships long-term will not work. There will come a time when you cannot keep doing that, for ten, twelve, twenty years. There comes a point when one of you has to say, 'Enough is enough, if we are going to take this forward we've got to have time in the week as well as the weekend. But if you accept that that is going to happen at some point and there is mileage in the relationship you have to say, 'Right, if we're going to spend limited time together what is it that we both enjoy doing?' Now that could be anything, if you enjoy climbing up a mountain, so actually you're sitting together with a drink, catching up on the week and enjoying each other's company. It really doesn't matter as long as you're enjoying what you're doing and savouring that quality time together. But also, you need to know where you're going long-term and it's not fudged, you need to say, 'What are we going to be doing in five years time, are we still going to be long distance which is going to eventually peter out?' Because you need to know that early on, or you're wasting your time.

MN: So otherwise you're just making excuses, you're enjoying the journey, but you don't know where you're going?

RH: Exactly right, whether it's a dead end.

MN: All right. Emily has sent a question concerning her and her partner, they run a business together from home, and here's a different spin on it, Emily's problem is that in the past year their livelihood has started to impinge on their lives. And it would do I suppose, as the home is now the office, so they are constantly talking about work issues, even when the kids are around and they're with the kids, so how do they set boundaries for home time and work time?

RH: I think there are two main points here. First they have got to make sure they are managing their time effectively. Two key principles for that, in making sure they are allocating and using their time as best they can, are one: Touch each piece of paper at work only once, if you can, and two: remember the five Ds: Do it, Defer it, Dump it, Delegate it or Discuss it. Whatever job you've got to do, one of those five options will apply. If you Do it, Dump it or Delegate it, the job is done. It is gone and should be no more. If you Defer or Discuss the job with your husband, it's not finished. Many people make the mistake of thinking because the job is done it's finished, but it's not, you've got to come back again at some point and look at the five Ds again. The second point to make is that you need to try, in your house if possible, an area that is work space, even if it is just one room. That is the office, and the rest of the house is non-work, even if you are talking about work you do it in that room, you do not pollute the rest of the house by work, by having mounds of paper on the kitchen table, or on the living room table, because every time you look at it you get wound up and frustrated. It's then interfering with your home life. So try to keep the two completely separate. Also learn when you are able to switch that phone off. Say, 'OK, it really doesn't matter, the phone is going off at nine tonight and it's not going back until nine tomorrow morning'

MN: And that way you can at least filter the calls, and if it is important you can pick it up, and if it's not you just ignore it.

RH: And I have to say, few calls are actually that important.

MN: Jay from Nottingham wants to know if there are any suitable checks we can tick off when we get home to ensure we don't get caught up in the chores, the kids, when we can't seem to squeeze it all in?

RH: I think you have to, and I'm with you on this one, I've got the T-shirt, life is so busy and you've got so much to do. What you can say, for example, is 'One morning or one evening a week, that is time my wife and I will blitz the house. Then it's done, and you know that's when it's going to be done so you can ignore the dust for the rest of the week. That's the time when we do it, the rest of the time is our time.' There are so many chores that we do that are non-essential, we do them because we're used to doing them. Use technology as best you can, if that dish doesn't get washed it's not critical. No one, in twenty years' time, is going to remember that that floor hasn't been Hoovered. They are going to remember if mum and dad aren't together because they haven't been talking.

MN: I'm glad you mentioned mum and dad because Lisa has a question, are our parents to blame? 'My parents were workaholics,' says Lisa, 'I think it may have rubbed off on me as well. I'm hardly ever at home with the kids as I'm so busy working. How can I pass on better work management skills to my children so the don't make the same mistakes?'

RH: Well to a certain extent Lisa, you're actually in a good position because you've got he benchmark to compare yourself to. You've seen what can happen by your parents being workaholic, so you know the pitfalls to avoid. I certainly do believe that you are the offspring of your parents with the environment having the final say, and I often hear myself saying what my father said thirty years ago, and thinking I can't believe I'm actually saying that! So you have probably got some influence from your parents there, but you know the damage that that can cause. And you should be able to say, 'I'm not going down that route, I'm going to avoid everything like that that they did, and in do the exact opposite.' So look at what they did, and think what the opposite is. You'll be surprised how much you can do. But you're not to blame for most of that, you are the product of your parents, but at the end of the day you have the final say and not your parents.

MN: Fern is fifty-four, and following a messy divorce she's now become involved in a relationship with a lovely gentleman, it's been six months and going great. She wants to make sure she doesn't make the mistakes she made the first time round. Have you got any relationship advice for those finding love the second time around?

RH: Well first of all, congratulations, I'm delighted that you have found love the second time around. It is unfortunately a fact, that people who have been divorced once are more likely to be divorced twice so I wouldn't rush into any kind of marital situation until you are feeling completely content and happy with things. But having said that, again you've got some experience, you know what makes you tick and you know what you don't like in a relationship. Now, six months in relative terms is not a long time, I think the acid test is about twelve to eighteen months. At six months if you rush in and get married you can still not know enough about that person that you're getting married to and you could get a nasty shock another six months later. So what I would say is if you get to the eighteen month mark and this is still nice, you're thinking, 'I love this man, this man loves me, it's all very comfy.' You're probably OK to then dip your toe in. And it why can't it be fine the second time round? You can find your prince the second time round.

MN: Helen with a question, her partner recently became a freelancer, thinking they would be able to spend more time together because he could choose his hours. We all know the reality is that when you're self-employed, you're the toughest employer there is! You work more hours, you don't take time off because there is no holiday pay, so it is a loss of money every time. How does Helen convince her partner that it's crucial to spend more time together and that there is more to life than working seven days a week?

RH: Tommy Cooper, the great comic, was terrifying of not working and eventually worked himself to death, because at the peek of his power he genuinely believed that the next day the work would go, even though all the evidence was completely the other way. He could have worked until he was a hundred and still made people laugh.

MN: Guess what, I was a stooge for him! I worked for him for six months so I know what you are talking about.

RH: Fantastic! I suppose the first thing to do is be fairly artificial here and sit down with your partner and see how much money he thinks he needs, and how much money you actually need. And I bet you my house that the two are completely different. In other words he is imagining you need so much but in reality you need much less. So work out how much he needs to work before he feels secure, because this is a question of security. This is not about you or your relationship, because about security and him feeling he is providing. He's a fairly typical man, he feels that he wants to provide and not let it all go pear-shaped, which is great, but by the same token you have to be able to say, 'OK, I've earned enough, now I have some fun time. I've earned that enjoyment, we'll go off and do it and we can spend some time together and some money together and the world isn't going to fall.' So just make that artificial accounting exercise work, look to see how much you've got and how much you actually need and I bet you'll find there's a difference.

MN: Richard and his wife work different hours, they both love their careers, but they do book one night a week where they shut the doors, it's their time, and he's saying perhaps other people should perhaps try this one.

RH: Yes, yes, yes.

MN: Glad we got that one sorted out. I know you've got a pile of top tips that came out of this; very briefly can you just headline those for us and tell us where we can find them again?

RH: They can all be found on the http://www.athomesociety.com/ website, the whole range of tips, including things like, Change out of your work clothes when you come home: make that clear blue water between work and home. Ignore the dust: relationships are better than Hoovering. Get that post-work routine: get that gin and tonic or drink you want when you come home. Know what your priorities are in life. Make time for each other: realise when there are going to be times when you can't have that amount of quality time together, but still make ten minutes. Prepare yourself for a long haul: It's not going to be solved in ten minutes, this is for life and you have to work at it, but if you really think your relationship is worth it, it's worth the work, the alternative isn't worth thinking about.

MN: Damning figures came out of this report, which was an indictment of our working life and our relationships. Can we turn it all around?

RH: We can. It's not too late, but it's going to take work and the first step is putting your hand up and saying, 'I think I've got a problem'.

MN: Awful lot of talking to be done. Thank you for your questions and thank you very much to our GP, that's doctor Roger Henderson, for coming in and joining us.

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