How often do you see your SO?

Recently a good friend of mine made a few snarky comments when I had mentioned I saw my SO about twice a week on average. "That's so little. Are you satisfied?"

Granted two-three times a week is not that much for a couple who lives in the same city, though I'll preface by saying we both work very intense high-pressure finance jobs. I just started ~8 months ago and my group is pretty tough on first years, expecting them to be on call until very late every day (even on weekends, we're expected to drop what we're doing and work if a request comes our way), as I'm sure is common at lots of BBs and EBs. My SO has a bit more flexibility but their job is even more intense than mine, so it's a bit hard for us to be in the right headspace during the week when work is weighing down on us so hard.

By contrast, my friend has a classic 9-5 job and their SO also has a very laid-back, chill job - so of course it makes sense they can see each other every day. 

Personally, my SO and I are quite satisfied / happy in our relationship - when we can't see each other during the week, we make sure to text frequently / call / facetime or do a netflix party or something like that, just to make sure we're spending time together. 

However, the comments have me wondering - are we spending too little time together? Should we be making more efforts? I'm curious to see what other folks in finance do, especially analysts.


 
Most Helpful

So let me get this straight, you and your gf know you’re both content under the current circumstances and your friend wants to talk shit? If he brings it up again hit him with the “nobody asked”

Relationships aren’t the uniform across the board. What works for some doesn’t work for others. If you’re still concerned, just have a conversation with your gf and reaffirm expectations / check if anything has changed

Not part of the question, but what kind of friend makes snarky comments about the strength of his friends relationships? If he had legitimate concerns there’s ways to bring it up respectfully

 

Don't talk to him again. It will make your life so much better. Toxic/competitive/jealous "friends" are literally the worst and are damaging to your health and well-being. Honestly it’s better to have no friends at all than these people in your life. Friends are there to offer constructive advice and support, not to one-up the other guy by acting competitive.

P.S. As you become more and more successful as the years progress, you will have to deal with more and more competitive/jealous people like this sometimes even in your own family. The best solution is to avoid all of these people as much as possible.

Array
 

Anonymous Monkey

Recently a good friend of mine made a few snarky comments when I had mentioned I saw my SO about twice a week on average. "That's so little. Are you satisfied?"

Granted two-three times a week is not that much for a couple who lives in the same city, though I'll preface by saying we both work very intense high-pressure finance jobs. I just started ~8 months ago and my group is pretty tough on first years, expecting them to be on call until very late every day (even on weekends, we're expected to drop what we're doing and work if a request comes our way), as I'm sure is common at lots of BBs and EBs. My SO has a bit more flexibility but their job is even more intense than mine, so it's a bit hard for us to be in the right headspace during the week when work is weighing down on us so hard.

By contrast, my friend has a classic 9-5 job and their SO also has a very laid-back, chill job - so of course it makes sense they can see each other every day. 

Personally, my SO and I are quite satisfied / happy in our relationship - when we can't see each other during the week, we make sure to text frequently / call / facetime or do a netflix party or something like that, just to make sure we're spending time together. 

However, the comments have me wondering - are we spending too little time together? Should we be making more efforts? I'm curious to see what other folks in finance do, especially analysts.

Just stop the post right there.

If you two are “quite satisfied or happy” with these high-pressure finance jobs then everything is okay and will work itself out.

 

See each other roughly 2 days per week, a coffee sometimes extra during the week, sometimes an extra evening if we’re both not busy. PE Associate. Dating 3 years, not living together. Works perfectly fine. Different strokes for different people 

 

Not in a relationship anymore, but when I was still seeing my ex (we were dating for ~3-4 years, from senior year of college to ~3 years post) we would probably spend time together in person maybe 2-4 times per week, and to be honest with you, that was perfectly sufficient for me. We'd spend the night at each other's places once or twice per week, have sex on average probably every other time we were together, and talk on the phone most nights. I'm someone who can be quite introverted and really enjoy my solitude, so I was totally satisfied with that arrangement. 

Ultimately, issues started popping up over time when it became clear that we had mismatched desires for how often we would be together. She seemed to want to take the next step of moving in together, which generally entails being together every day (especially during WFH in a 1-bed apt), sleeping together every night, etc., and frankly it turned out to be wayyyyyy too much for me. I felt really smothered, her presence started to really chafe on me over time since I generally can't *totally* relax unless I'm by myself, and I really disliked the general feeling of living on someone else's schedule. She got very upset when I told her how I felt, and it ended up being a major factor in us breaking up. 

Rambling aside, my opinion is that if you're both content with the current arrangement, don't let anyone else interfere or make you feel insecure or like you have to make a change that you're not interested in making. I feel like arguably the biggest key to having a successful long-term relationship is the sustainability of your routine, and if you're trying to make something work that you're not totally comfortable with, it'll cause friction even if both people have good intentions. I agree with other comments that say you may want to have a conversation with your SO to reaffirm expectations and desires, but at the end of the day, you're only in the relationship to make yourself and your SO happy. Nobody else's opinion should really matter as long as neither of you are hurting each other or yourselves. 

 

To be honest it wasn't really one single thing in particular. It was more a result of tension building over time as a result of a few different issues. A couple years in, she received a job offer in another state and was planning to go to grad school a year or two later and I wasn't willing to move with her, so it provided a natural breakpoint. A couple of the issues that I would highlight were:

  • As I mentioned in my post previously, we disagreed on how often we wanted to be together. She wanted to spend every day and night together, and I was much happier with 3x per week or so. We ended up doing something in the middle, and neither of us was really satisfied with it. It also created a sort of push/pull dynamic where she was constantly pushing to spend more time with me, and I would sort of end up dragging my feet because I wanted more time alone/away from her. She ended up being the one who would always initiate activities or hitting me up to hang out, and she felt really unappreciated/undesired as a result because I wasn't pursuing her. 
  • She struggled with a lot of emotional issues (depression, anxiety, etc.) that I frankly had a lot more patience for when I was younger - in fact, I kind of liked it at first because she would always really enjoy spending time with me and it made me feel liked and appreciated. As I got older, I lost patience for it because she kind of was getting increasingly codependent, and it just became very frustrating to deal with - she would get stressed out and agitated very easily (e.g. if a flight were delayed, or we were stuck in traffic, or we went out to dinner together and it wasn't as good as she wanted it to be, etc.) and it became very tiresome dealing with someone who would be put in a bad mood over things that were really trivial to me. This also fed into my previous point where I didn't like to initiate things because I was somewhat afraid of trying to make plans that she would end up not enjoying and having to deal with someone who took it out on me. 
  • This is a bit of a weird issue but I am white and she is not, and she told me several times that she felt sort of uncomfortable dating a white guy since she felt like she was enabling and validating the racist behavior of other white guys by dating me (??? wtf???). This one really pissed me off because her ethnicity was basically irrelevant to me beyond the fact that I thought she was really attractive, and I felt like she was unfairly projecting her internal issues onto me, especially after we'd been together for years.

There were other problems that I'm not going to get into just because I don't want this to get too long. Unfortunately, the issues I described above presented themselves fairly stealthily (i.e. they were not immediate dealbreakers - it took time for me to gradually become increasingly bothered by them) - or at least, I didn't have enough experience at the time to recognize them immediately. We got along really well when together, had great chemistry, etc., and she was a really sweet and genuine girl who cared about me a lot. That said, she had issues that became more and more difficult for me to overlook as more time passed, and when the opportunity for us to break up in an amicable way presented itself, I was pretty relieved. 

 

I’m also in a relationship now, and essentially just see my SO on the weekend.

When I initially hit the desk and work was chiller the first few months, we would try to do dinner once/twice a week. But over time as things ramped up, this became unreasonable. Also even if I get off early now, I am usually so exhausted that I just want to be by myself. I’m also an introvert so don’t need/want to be around other people all the time.

But we always spend most of the weekend together - my SO usually sleeps over on Friday/Saturday and we usually go out together with our mutual friends on the weekend. That seems to work well for us, especially because we went to different colleges so we’re used to only seeing each other on the weekend.

We also text/Snapchat consistently throughout the week/day (keep a streak and also respond every few hours, depending on how busy we are). So that helps just to keep in touch, even when we aren’t together.

I agree with the 2 comments above and disagree with the 1st comment that you should move in together - moving in is a big deal and can get super messy if you break up (i.e. who keeps the apt, moving out and finding a new lease/roommate while also working this job, etc.). Everyone should make their own decision about what they want to do but I would only move in with someone if the relationship was super serious and if marriage was a high possibility. I’m also in my early 20s and not expecting to get married any time soon.

 

FWIW when my (now) wife and I were dating, we’d see each other twice a week. Tuesday evenings and Saturdays. We didn’t live together because we didn’t want to rush it and my wife is religious.

Now we both WFH so it’s honestly just meetings and a few outings when we’re not together. 

“The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.” - Nassim Taleb
 

All analyst years = 1-3 times per week. It’s all relative. Could compare to the desolate loneliness of having no SO…

 

Me and my girlfriend live 10 minutes away from each other and we hang out 1 time a week. This is enough for me because I am always doing something “productive” for my life. She would probably want to hang out more, but she respects the time when we are apart. We text every night before bed and sometimes ft. I would say that if you’re happy then there’s no problem. Your friend is toxic and in my opinion when it comes down to it, it’s gonna be you and your SO over everyone. I am fine with once a week also because I know if I can work hard now then one day we’ll be able to spend every night together in a nice house. Totally up to you and your SO, but if your happy then just keep going!

 

Almost daily for a few hours even if I’m working she will come over and we’ll eat take out together and sleep together. During the weekends we spend most of the time together besides Sunday when she has plans with her friends and I have normally have work. I miss having some alone time at times but I really do like seeing her daily and even when I’m stress and busy just having her around is very soothing and happy.

 

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