My husband and I are both professors who graduated with our PhDs year ago. Up until now, we have always been together 24/7 figuratively and literally. We were in graduate school together and were only apart when we were in classes, teaching, and doing other academic responsibilities.

The job market hit us hard in 2020 and due to my area having more jobs available, I was the one who secured an academic position and was able to negotiate a spousal hire for him. We were at the same workplace, always met up for lunch or coffee, drove to and from work together, etc.

For the first time, we will be now working at different universities. Due to the difficulties of academic couples getting jobs at the same universities, most people in this situation aim for colleges that are within a reasonable commute. My new institution is 30 minutes away from our house and his is 75 minutes away.

Based on his teaching and meeting schedule, he will only be going into the office three days a week from Monday to Wednesday. As he needs to be there early in the mornings, he will be staying in his office overnight (which looks very much like a stereotypical professor office on TV - far from accurate but he luckily landed one). This means he will only be home from Wednesday night to Monday morning. Overall, could be much more worse.

We got him a microwave, mini fridge, Keurig machine, and I plan to prep all his meals for those days in advance for him to have during those days. He plans to get a local gym membership and shower there nightly after working out.

Moving isn’t an option as we just bought a house a year ago at an amazing rate and we live in a gentrifying area so we want to hold on to it.

I am looking for suggestions on how to better make use of the nights that I have solo as a wife to uplevel our relationship as well as adjust to this transition. I will have a little bit more free time on my hands (albeit not too much as I also have a very demanding career) but also want to acknowledge to my husband that I appreciate the sacrifices he is taking by doing this for us.

We don’t have kids yet and are planning to start TTC in a year or two (really depends on this as well as our careers as I am still working on establishing myself in contrast to him). I am at a more demanding, rigorous university than him as well.

Thank you in advance!