After the Vows – Schedules

In this episode of After the Vows, Joe and Karen Coffey sit down with Jimmy and Holly Diakandru to talk about what it’s like to feel like “ships passing in the night” because of mismatched schedules. They share how shift work, kids, and busy seasons created challenges for their marriage — and how intentional communication, honesty, and creativity helped them reconnect. The conversation is full of practical wisdom about finding rhythms that work for your unique family, valuing each other’s roles, and making time to truly see one another.

What is After the Vows?

After the Vows is a podcast about the real challenges that arise in marriage after the honeymoon phase fades. Hosted by Joe & Karen Coffey, each episode offers honest conversations about growing together through every season of marriage. New episodes drop every Thursday, offering real talk, real struggles, and real hope—whether you're newly married or decades in.

Welcome to After the Vows, a podcast from Christ Community Chapel about the challenges that show up in marriage after the honeymoon ends. I'm Joe Coffey, and together with my wife Karen, we will gather in each episode with some friends just to talk about the real issues that happened in every marriage. I hope you'll join us. Hey, welcome to this episode of After the Vows. We are looking at issues that come into every marriage after the wedding. And today we're going to talk about when you are like ships passing in the night, um, because of busyness, uh, or whatever's going on. It happens in any marriage, but in this particular episode, we're going to talk about a mismatched schedule. So, uh, let me introduce our guests for today. This is my co host and lovely wife, Karen. Hello. And then our, uh, friends Holly and Jimmy Diakandru. So welcome. Great to have you guys. Thanks. All right, before we get into it, I gotta mention your wedding photo. We had you bring your wedding photo in. Uh, and I just have to ask, uh, Jimmy, did you have to drug Holly? She looks like her eyes are a little bit. Yeah, I wasn't gonna say anything, but yes, she does. Uh, how long you been married? We got married in 2008. He's trying to really quick do the math in his head. Can you see that happening? 17 years. 18. Going on 18. Yeah, just 18. There you go. That 18 years. 18 years. All right, let, uh, me ask you this, who fell in love first? I don't know, to be honest. You're supposed to say you did. Me. Me. Yeah. We were really good friends in high school. We dated each other's best friends. That's, I feel like a story for a different podcast and didn't, um, end up together till college, but we were friends for what, three or four years? Really, really good friends first. Yeah, she went to school at Paul beach, and we actually went down there, a group of friends. And that's, I think, when something was like, hmm, I don't know what happened, but ok, there was a twinkle in the eye. Uh, but just so you know, I, uh, remember hearing a sociologist say that like is a better foundation for marriage than love. That if you like someone, um, because it's a much more stable emotion, you don't fall in and out of like. You fall in and out of love. Love is a very emotional thing. But. And I remember when I heard that, I went to Karen, that we'd only been married for a few years, and I tried to tell her that I like her more than I love her and that did not go over imagine. Yeah that didn't land the way you thought it was. No, no. Probably took two days to dig out of that hole. Wasn't quite as romantic as you. In my head it was really. Yeah, it was great. All right, um, the reason we're gonna talk to you about kind of ships passing in the night is because for a number of years in your marriage you guys had different schedules. I know Jimmy, uh, your job has been one that you have worked uh, like different shifts. Uh, what do you do? Tell me what you do. I work for a steel company, steel production in Cleveland. All right, and so how long did you work? Like give me what was your least favorite shift? Um, I guess for different reasons, different things. For a long time I either worked days from like 5am to 5pm like 15 shifts a month. And then the next month it would be nights the same. It was much easier to sleep when you're on nights, you know cause you get a good eight to 10 hours. Cause nobody's home, you just sleep. Days were hard just cause you got up really early and both of them. The hardest part I think was when I was working nights, I'd work three or four night shifts and then when I finish up I get home at 6am especially in the summer when the kids are off. I tried to get up at like 10am just to have like a day. So for those like two or three days I'd almost switch back over like a 24 hour time change and get up normal with everybody. And then like the night before I went back I would just try to stay up then kind of switch back. That was the hardest part. Just sanity wise, it seems like it'd be tough to be working and then try to get back to a normal uh, kind of schedule. So Holly, when he was doing different shifts, what was the hardest shift for you, just as a wife. And then uh, when you started having children, how did that complicate things? Yeah, I mean he started working shifts almost immediately after we got married. Actually the first six months of our marriage he worked in a different state so we weren't even together. And then for five years, even before we had kids, he was on swing shifts. And I think it wasn't hard until we had kids. And actually I would say it wasn't hard until we had kids who had things to do. Because when we had little kids we could just, especially when they're toddlers, we would just do whenever he was home, we were home. We didn't have to be at soccer games or school plays or anything like that. So I think the hardest part would have been when he worked nights for me, because then I did all of the evening stuff and all of the school activities and everything alone by myself. Right. Let's back up. When you didn't have kids, uh, how did you reconnect with different schedules? Like, he comes home, let's say, when you say a swing shift. What's the swing shift? Uh, it's either 6:00am to 6:00pm or 6:00pm to 6:00am okay. When it's 6:00pm to 6:00am he comes home, 6:00am he's tired, you're going to eat, then you want to...how long would you stay up and then go to bed? I wouldn't even. I usually wouldn't even see her. I'd just go straight to bed. I say that, but we relieved a little early, so I'd get home at like six. So I'JUST go straight to bed. Okay. So yeah, we wouldn't see each other. She'd be sleeping, I'd get in to bed, she'd wake up. Well, I had a job. Yeah. I had to go to work, so. All right, so then when you got. So how long would you go without seeing each other? I guess when I was working and I was. Cause I wouldn't be home before you left for work. When you were tonights that it was probably. You only ever worked maybe four days in a row at the most. Yeah, uh, four days would be normal. If I had to work, like overtime or something, I could extend more for somebody else or something, but. So you could go four days without seeing each other. How did you reconnect them? Well, I think it was easy when I didn't have kids because in the beginning, sometimes if he was going to work and he had to leave at 5 in the morning when we first got married, I'd like get up and have breakfast with you. I was like, o, I'll get up, I'll cook him breakfast. You know. That slowly went away. I got out of bed less and less. First month. Yeah. You know, and I could stay up a lot later, like when he was switching to nights and he'd have to stay up till one or two in the morning and then sleep in. That was fun. I would stay up with him. It wasn't until we had kids that I was like, this is for the birds. They're gonna be up in four hours. I got toa go to sleep. Um, yeah, kids Were a big, big change for sure. Yeah. Oay. Now, Karen, you and I talked some about different times in our lives where our schul. My schedule has been tough. When was it the toughest for you? What adjustments did you have to make? How did we reconnect? Yeah, I think this is a really important topic because whether it's a work schedule or whether it's lifestyle or just having children, I think mismatched schedules is, um, very common. And I think for us, I would say when the kids were in grade school was probably the harder, um, time. And, uh, for us, it's unique because, uh, you didn't travel as much, but when you did travel, you were out of the country, so we were really on our own. And we said earlier that there were many times you were out of town that something terrible happened where there was a car wreck, there was, um, all the kids at ChickenPX. And one time, um, a tornado went. Tornado? Yeah. And so I'd be on a mission trip for two weeks, right. And then least for a couple of summers, I know I came home for a week and then went on another mission trip for two weeks. And typically on a mission trip, um, there wasn't much communication. And that was one thing that I think is important that we need to cover today is, um, the importance of communication and how to communicate things. So we're in a car accident, and I didn't want to tell you because I didn't want you to worry and you're away and you can't come home anyway. Of course, if it had been serious, I would have. But it's those little details you have to figure out. Okay, how much do I tell him and what do I tell him? Um, and when do I tell him? Because my tendency, I think, to answer your question, when was it harder? When the kids were little, My tendency was to just dump all this information on you when you got home of what you missed and, um, how hard it was. And that doesn't really help you because then you're tired, you're not thinking straight because you've been on a mission trip. And then, um, we disconnect even more, I think. So with you guys, like when you have a mismatched schedule and you're trying do. When do you catch them up? Catch Jimmy up? How did you guys communicate? I mean, now we have, like, when we started, we were doing this, we didn't have cell phones and stuff, so there really wasn't any communication. I think that's a big difference because we text a lot. So Can I can text someone? He's at work. Hey, this just happened. Or pictures of what we're doing and he can stay in the loop to some extent. I think it would be really hard if he came home and I have to be like, okay, here's the 43 things that happened while you were gone. Now I feel like you would know 40 of them. Yeah, I think I knew everything that was going on. Obviously I wasn't involved firsthand, but I mean text messages, I, I talked a few times. I knew what was happening. Yeah, I think one of the things that was hard for me and I guess we're going to stay. It gets much more complicated with kids. I think when it was just the two of us. You can always find time when you want to to reconnect and it's not as chaotic. But I think when I would come home I wouldn't know how to re enter life. Like you had a thing. You would have to learn how to function. Everything you were doing the whole we had a rhythm and we. And then I was come home and go, hey, daddys'home and then I wouldn't know what to do. And then sometime thems do the wrong thing, you guys. Absolutely. Yeah. I remember many times first saying you can't just come home and throw everything off or something along those lines. Yeah, um, yeah, I mean even now we were just having this conversation about like, oh, it's fine if they stay up, they don't have to go to bed. And like, well they do because you're not here when I wake them up in the morning. And as much fun as it would be to stay up and play with you, they do need a good nights rest because what you dont t see is the meltdowns that come in the morning if they havent t slept. So do you have. How do you preempt that now? Now mean you've worked through it. So you know, I think you're really receptive to me just telling you, like just listen. Good answer. Not. I think I do think you have been receptive of me saying like hey, that was like a really harsh punishment given that this is what's been happening all day and this is where that emotion stemmed from. Then you'like go okay. And like it comes from a place of him wanting to be involved and like okay, I'm your partner. Like I could discipline this time because you've been here alone. And so I think just listening to me say like I don't know that that is the best way to handle it. Yeah. I think for me, the hardest part was I was tired. I just worked these shifts for three days. Whatever. I don't have the patience. So, you know, she has a lot more patience than me in general. So it was just kind of on steroids that I'd just be like, he did this. He needs this discipline. Where I think for days, she was kind of talking it through with you, one of our kids, whatever is going on. And I would just kind of jump in rashly. Yeah. And it seems that it could be hard, too, if you come home. Well, I think we've talked about it, too, that, uh, in our situation, like, I would come home, uh, from work, being tired. Sometimes with littles, you'd be like, okay, it's your turn. Right? Uh, yeah. Right. I've been with them all day, and now it's time for you to connect with the kids. But you were tired, too. Yeah. So how do we work that out? I don't think that's just for shifts. I think even if you had a corporate 9cl to 5, you get home for sure. And if you've been home with the kids, you're like, okay, I'm off. It's your turn. Yeah. And I think one of the problems that I think a lot of men have. I'm, uh, just gonna go with traditional roles where, uh, a mother is staying at home and a guy comes home and he thinks, what were you doing all day? Right. And that is a terrible. What. I always think that, uh, fathers, every once in a while, should'take the kid grocery shopping. Just an adventure. Yep. And the woman should go and have a Starbucks and just relax. And then it reminds me of. There's a video going around a couple years ago, I think of, uh, they could attach something to men's stomachs that would give them the, uh, the sensation of a contraction, uh, to see how they did. And the guys were screaming. They were crumpling. Yeah. And he was going, what was that? That was like a seven. And it was like a two. Like, the women were laughing. I think that's the way most of us would feel if we were left alone with the kids for, like, four days at a time or two weeks at a time. Yeah. Okay. So, uh, what would you do to reset, uh, like, when you haven't seen each other for a while? I think before kids, it was easy. You just. You go out to dinner, you do whatever you want. With kids, it's a lot more challenging. Um, I don't necessarily know that we've done it. Well, it's hard to be intentional, obviously. You have to be very intentional and just stick with a plan of, we're going to do this next Friday. We're going to go out, just try to deal with a lot going on. Well, I think we were, we always have been really intentional about doing things. So, like, when you are off, we rarely were like, okay, we're going toa stay home and tackle this to do list. Like, we often were like, okay, we're go goingna go out and we'renna find a waterfall. Or that's kind of how our love of traveling started. Like, in the beginning, it started ca becausee we were battling infertility and we needed to, like, reset from the world and just take a beat for the two of us. And so we would go somewhere new and kind of reconnect and be like, okay, this is a really hard season, but you and I are on the same team. And then we just kind of kept that rhythm, I think, when we had kids. And of course, I mean, we love to travel far, but we would also do a lot like, okay, let's go for a hike and we're just gonna take all the kids and we haven't been together and we're just going toa be all five of us together and just, uh, kind of live this day and remember what it feels like to be us as a family. And we're pretty intentional about doing that even now. Yeah, I think reconnecting is a family, at least for me, is much easier than just reconnecting just me and you prioritizing that time. Yeah, and that's interesting. I mean, I was going to ask that because this is a marriage podcast and there. It's one thing to reconnect as a family, it's another thing to try to reconnect with each other. I remember. I mean, I'm a quality time kind of person, so there'd be times where I would just need Karen and it's hard to go, I gotta get rid of these kids just to spend some time with her. So when, uh, that comes up, like, we would do it. We would have somebody come over and stay with our kids and we'd go to breakfast. That was what we started doing because that was the cheapest meal. We didn't have any money and that's. We would go and have breakfast together. Um, I think one thing that, um, Holly, you've said a couple times is to be on the same page and to communicate. And I think that's really the most important thing and that creates the bond where with the different roles and with the different schedules, once we get on our own track and you're on your track, and if those two don't blend, then, um, you're going to keep going on different tracks, and consequently, the treks get further and further apart. And I remember at one point I would, um, just kind of in my mind just think, he doesn't have time for this. I'm just going to hunker down and we'll get through. And then eventually that kind of passed, but you were left out of a situation or a scenario. And there was that one time, remember, we went out to dinner. And I, um. I don't think I said it out of frustration, but I just said, you have no idea what I do all day. Uh, I remember when you said that, and I was like, come on, what do you do? And you took a notebook and my yellow PA wrote down my schedule for the week. And I think at that point, I really felt seen and heard. And I think whether it's the mom who works or the dad who works, everybody needs to know what the other person is doing and how they feel. And I think, um, for me to even apologize to you for keeping you out of the loop for things, because I felt like you had too much, but that wasn't my decision to make. And I think when I would do that, then you felt left out. Ye. Go ahead. I was just gonna add, I think that, um, it is really important to even value what the other person does, because it's really easy for me to say, well, it's much easier to go sit at a desk at work all day when I have been you dealing with this tantrum and this issue and this and this. And I think that's really where you start to not connect with each other, because you're missing each other entirely. And so being able to honor and say, okay, what you do is hard in a different way than what I do. Um, but both are really necessary for our family to move forward. Exactly. Yeah. And that's huge. I think that's a really good point, Hollyw. And I think part of it is then you have to be willing to share the hardness of your day every once in a while. Because I know I've talked to some men before, and they're going, I just live that day. I don't want to relive it and have to tell my wife about it. And I'm thinking, uh, but then that means 8 to 10 hours day of your day, every day for your life. 1/3 of your life is cut away from your spouse. They won't know anything about it. So you have to share, like selectively share something. I think. What do I. I force us to do highs and lows every day. Oh, that's good. Yeah. And we've done it just the two of us, but now we make our kids do it every day at dinner, every day. Well, I mean we're pretty consistent, I would say 90% of the time we do highs and lows. We go on vacation and that just with us, anyone who comes on, her family. We went on a trip, just friends. Highs and lows. Yeah. I want everyone to do. That's a really good question. Yeah, because that's not a yes, no question. It's not a yes no question. And sometimes to your point, he'd be like, oh, this was really hard. I'd be, well, what was really hard? He'like well, you're not gonna understand. I'm like, well, you gotta tell it anyway if that's your low, like what happened? And then it allows you to enter into those moments. Mhm. Uh, yeah. We always will tell young couples to do three things. To debrief daily, day, weekly, depart quarterly if you can. But that's a great way to debrief daily. Just to, okay, give. It doesn't take very long and it will connect you with a high and a low, which means that it's also charged with some emotion, which is a different level of communication than just saying, how was your day? Fine. How was your day? Fine. Uh, you know, or talking about the news. So when have you guys been able to like when we say date weekly. Have you guys been able to do that? How do you do that? We try. Probably haven't done a good job of sticking with it. Yeah, definitely not weekly. Mean we'd like to, but m Probably more monthly. Yeah. Our kids go to bed fairly early, so we do. I mean we'll watch show together every night. You know, we won't get away away. But yeah, that's pretty good though. Yeah. You can create the scenario of feeling like you're together, put your phones down and maybe have a snack or something. Yeah, I think sometimes that concept for couples feels unattainable. Like I can't afford a babysitter. We don't have babysitter. So to say like you need to go away every week or uh, go on a date every week can feel like, uh, oh, I mean I can't do that. And so I think being intentional in the space you have is maybe A better goal. Yeah. And I think maybe when we tell couples that we ought to say try to hit 2 out of 3 because M you guys were really good at departing. Oh yeah. Bye. Like you're big on like we didn't depart for years and years ca because we couldn't afford that. We could afford breakfast but we couldn't get away. But now we can hit all three. But I think two out of the three. If you're only hitting one out of the three it'snn be something we could be better at is departing could be going to the patio for 30min after a kids to go to bed. I mean it could be anything. You don't have to go out to dinner. Good. Okay Karen, what's one piece of advice you would tell your younger self about just uh, being ships passing and or the different struggles that we have had with our schedules and trying to connect and m. Mhm. I think it would be um. Just be honest. Just say if you're feeling lonely or if I'm feeling um, I need help with something. Just be honest. Okay. Holly, what's one thing is you'tell your younger self. Um, I think it would be to not compare my family to other families. I think I wrestled for a long time that because my family looked different and my kids we'eat dinner sometimes at 7 and everyone's putting bed their kids to bed at 7. That I wasn't a sufficient enough parent and once I overcame like hey, God gave you this family, this space, use it well. I think it was so much more freeing and I wish I had done it earlier just to create rhythms that worked for us and not for the world. That's really good, Jimmy. I would say just communicate better and more. I would say I'm not a very talkative, outgoing person to begin with especially when it comes to feelings. You'on a podcast some now you're good. Good one. But uh, yeah, mean that's what I was say make more time to just be intentional. Okay. What would you say? I think for me I would probably say a few things uh, that I would have to get better at communicating which is interesting because I'm a communicator by profession. But I also think I would ask more questions like ask how I could reer and I know that when you would have everything running and I would try to reent enter if it didn't work, if I didn't know what to do I would gravitate to ESPN or whatever and then I'm even more removed. But I think I would do that. I think we did a good job though of staying connected with uh, we spend time in the morning with coffee, we pray together at night. I mean that kind of thing is a really good kind of rhythm that we have figured out over the time and I would have figured that out earlier, I think. Yeah. Okay, good. Thanks so much for uh, joining me on this episode. It's been great. So really grateful for you guys. Thanks to me. Thanks Holly. Thanks for having us. Hey, thanks for listening to After the Vows. We really hope this conversation encouraged you. It has given you something to talk about with your spouse but maybe more than anything just reminding you that you're not alone if you want to keep growing in your marriage. Check out more episodes sermons. There is other helpful content on the CCC app or on our YouTube channel. Be sure to subscribe and we'll see you next time. Thanks.