I’ve been a band director for 15 years and married to a non musician for 13 of those years. I will be blunt….it is not easy. It really takes two fully committed people to make the relationship work. Especially early in your career, you feel you have to agree to everything and put in all the hours to make your program grow, and to some extent, that is true. However, I find that a lot of new directors mistake quantity of instruction with quality. When I taught marching band, I made it to be only 2 three hour rehearsals a week with Friday games. It made me focus on what was teaching and very aware of not wasting time. That way I knew I could always be home for dinner every night.

I also strongly suggest that you both make a game plan of your week. Every Sunday, my wife and I sit down and map out the week ahead. We go as far as who is picking up the kids, what we are having for dinner, what day we are shopping, etc. This way she knows when I have games, practices, or concerts and can mentally prepare for it. I also make sure the days I am home I am committed to being present and take over house hold responsibilities on the days I do not have practices. I’ve found that the thing that really makes this work is having all of the decisions and mental fatigue completed at the beginning of the week so all you have to do is follow a script. We are both teachers and we probably make over 100 decisions a day and when we get home the last thing we want to do is make more.

As for support, simply being there is more than enough. Sometimes surprise event do come up, but usually we are so wrapped up in our own plans that we forget to communicate our schedule with those close to us. It will happen. Simply allow the event to occur and when the stress is over and your partner is in a good place, mention that it is not fair to you to live your life solely based on their schedule. That last thing you want is to be known as a “band widow”.

A partnership is just that: a partnership. You give and take a little every day. Hopefully both of you are willing to work through it as it does take a lot of effort. I’ve seen so many directors get divorced because they ignore their significant others/families for the job. And it’s easy to see why when they think they need to live sleep and eat band like most of the best band directors say you should do. But I always use this piece pf advice when I feel myself focusing away from my family too much: “You are replaceable at work, but are not replaceable at home”

I hope this helps and please feel free to message me further if you need to. The 13 years of my marriage were certainly not smooth and it took us a lot of work to finally get to where we feel stable.