Latest / The Refrigeration Mentor Podcast / Episode 381. Wife of a Refrigeration Technician: Navigating Relationships, Kids and On-Calls with Aria Lucey

Transcript

Episode 381. Wife of a Refrigeration Technician: Navigating Relationships, Kids and On-Calls with Aria Lucey · The Refrigeration Mentor Podcast

• 0:00
  Trevor: Welcome to the Refrigeration Mentor Podcast. I'm your host Trevor Matthews, and I got a really good conversation today with Area Lucy Aria married and the partner of Aiden and Aiden's ambassador of the refrigeration mentor community.
• 0:03
  Aria: Yeah, so that was definitely something challenging. You're trying to get to know this person and kind of see, do you wanna have a relationship with them? And kind of, do you like each other and do you have shared interests? And not having a lot of time to spend together could be challenging.
• 0:06
  And I know, I know I talk with Aidan about this a lot. He was really good at that, but there's a lot of guys that I know. Mm-hmm. They're not as good as communicators. They're not, and I wasn't, I wasn't very good as, as an open communicator. Like I was great at talking. Mm-hmm. But sometimes just not talking about the stuff that maybe my spouse or my partner wanted to talk about.
• 0:09
  And making sure you take the time too. Kind of close off the fight, if that makes sense. Like, it's okay to have the fight, but let's not stew about it. Like, we always make sure that once we've been kind of done arguing about something, we can say, Hey, I'm sorry I said X, Y, z, sorry that this kind of hurt your feelings.
• 0:12
  Trevor: I love that it's we, me and Julie have been in, in lots of different therapies and lots of different coaching sessions where they say, notice the good. There was one that we did with the kids, so all of us, and, and one of the big things is notice the good.
• 0:15
  And do you have any friends that, that, that. Have that situation where now they're dating someone that does supermarket refrigeration, and now it's in a lot more demanding. Is there any advice you could give to, to some people, both the technician or both the, that new partner, that new friend and some advice on that?
• 0:18
  Aria: Yeah, so, when the, when our kids were a lot smaller, when I was first kind of on maternity leave, Aiden was doing like night shifts and out of town work and stuff. So, that was hard. Well, the probably main thing we did at that time was keeping a consistent routine and schedule. So, while maybe aid inside of things was a bit all over the place, like the core kind of family life, I guess you could say had kind of the more consistency. So, I had like my Friday nights where that was my grocery night or things like that and kind of keeping things more predictable for myself and for the kids.
• 0:21
  Trevor: Yeah. And that's something that I miss. Too. Like I, Julia Al always did the kid stuff, like, and I didn't recognize it. Then I'm like, well, I, I gotta go to work. Mm-hmm. And that's one of the things that I look back and reflect on that I like, I wish I would've thought about it a bit more because we can't move stuff off as a refrigeration tech.
• 0:24
  ? Like if you, you need two salaries, like just Yeah. Because the houses are a million dollars, like it's, yeah. It's not easy on anybody's salary, even if you're a doctor just to go buy a million dollar houses very easily. ? You gotta,
• 0:27
  And, and get the certificate that I needed to get and get all my degrees sorted. And then once that was done and I went back into the workforce, then he could, work on some different things for himself and kind of, setting like some goals together of how we can each support the other person and kind of putting some timelines to it and being very specific with what the goal is.
• 0:30
  It's. Taken it off of your plate and off of like your mental load because you know that person has kind of got it. Again, though, that leads to like consistency. If you say you're going to do that task, then that's your task to remember and we're not gonna be then reminding the other person, Hey, did you do that?
• 0:33
  Soon as that comes in, he's phoning me or emailing it to me and saying, Hey, signups on this date at this time, which one of us is gonna be on the computer, like waiting to go. So, that's one thing that he's taken on. So. Being clear about that and kind of looking at it from, I like to compare to being in hr, looking at it as like, it's like an employee situation or a workplace situation.
• 0:36
  He's. Doing the emergencies today, like we're really proud of our dad, that he is the person that people rely on and, and go do that. And then also just the like. Your, your career is an important part of who you are too. So like dad likes going to work, he's proud of the job that he does and we need to be well-rounded people.
• 0:39
  How do I. Get better. And, and, and now personal development is very huge for me. This is why we're having this conversation. Mm-hmm. Because I, I wanna learn more. But I think reflection is a, is a big one that that'll help. And then same thing is knowledge, right? Learning from other people, like you say the therapists or, or coach, whatever you want to call it, it doesn't really matter.
• 0:42
  Aria: Yeah. To kind of have it kind of end on a positive note is like, yeah, there's lots of challenges in it, but also being able to see like, you're never gonna find a harder working person than your spouse who's in the trades, who's working all these hours doing what they love to, like seeing your partner abuse something they're passionate about.