Desperate farmwife: when your partner has 'farm tunnel vision'

Does your partner have farm-associated tunnel vision? Because mine does. It gets worse when farming becomes complicated. If the weather has been too wet, or too dry. When milk prices go down. When we’re leading up to a big event, like silage or calving. If there is a TB test coming up. I feel him slipping away; not listening to conversations around the kitchen table. Not hearing the children when they ask him a question.

Being snappy or testy.

During tunnel vision times, he says no to everything.

“I don’t have time.”

“We can’t afford it.”

When I mention my husband’s mood to non-farming folk, they appear concerned. I have had close friends come for overnight stays and comment, “Your husband is here, physically – but he’s not really here,” and they are correct. He is usually out farming; doing jobs instead of taking a bit of time off for their visit to go out for dinner or take a road trip. And, I should add, he is missed – because under normal circumstances, he is great craic.

When I mention his mood to other farming folk – particularly those who are married to farmers – they get it. Because their partners are the same. The farm has the ability to invade their minds; making anything else – a night away in a hotel, your child’s piano recital – seem miniscule by comparison. Yes, when the tunnel vision occurs, our farming partners miss really important or fun events. And who, may I ask, needs a bit of fun in their lives more than anyone else in the country but farmers?

I think the tunnel vision happens for a few different reasons, but the most crucial is that they don’t leave the farm very often. They are living in a bubble of physical labour, paperwork, bureaucracy, online forms, vet bills, feed bills and all the other physical, mental and emotional costs associated with modern-day farming. At the same time, they love what they do. It’s almost like Stockholm syndrome.

On the rare occasions you are able to physically remove your farmer from the farm, it’s amazing how quickly they change. It’s almost like flipping a switch. I have never regretted forcing my husband to come on a weekend away, a family holiday or a night out with friends, because he always ends up saying the same thing:

“Thanks, I think I needed that.”

Well, d’uh.

So, you might be wondering (if you live under similar circumstances): how do I do it? How do I force my dear aul’ husband to get his butt off the farm?

During tunnel vision times, he says no to everything

Non-farming folk

It’s really easy. I just make plans and tell him I’m going whether he’s coming or not. Many times, I end up going somewhere – just me and the kids – without him. And he sits at home and misses us and realises what (and who) the important things in life really are. It kind of “shocks” him out of the tunnel vision.

It’s a tough-love approach, I suppose, but it works every time. I might be a farmwife, but long gone are the days of us having to be back home in time to get dinner on the table.

And long gone are the days where a farmer needs to be 100% tied to his or her farm all day, every day. Everyone deserves time off; everyone deserves a holiday. And the children are only little once.

To all the tunnel-visioned farmers out there: find help if you need it and can afford it and make time for yourself and your family this summer, because you will regret not being there.

And you won’t even remember that fence you fixed while your partner and children were having fun without you.

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