Learning about what your boyfriend does for work is typically exciting; however, these careers make dating difficult because they have walls just too difficult to build a life around.
Crime scene cleaner
This job isn’t for everyone. Far beyond janitorial duty, these workers are hired to clean and disinfect areas after murders, suicides, unattended deaths, factory accidents or extreme cases of hoarding.
Everything from blood to bodily fluids and possible biohazards are scrubbed away, oftentimes requiring workers to take apart an entire room, cut out carpeting soaked with fluids and decontaminate the space of pathogens.
Imagine working in crime scenes wearing full hazmat gear and respirators to avoid contracting any diseases.
The real issue with this job for a girlfriend? It’s not the fact that your boyfriend would be inhaling death and absorbing trauma into his skin on a daily basis. It’s everything that he would have to think about when he was away from work too.
Air traffic controller
Yes, I know we all know someone who has an ATC as a significant other. The job of working at a major “En Route” center (the centers that handle all high-altitude traffic between airports) is such an intense pressure-cooker that few partners can handle it.
These guys control the safe and efficient flow of hundreds of airplanes at a time. They make sure none of those planes collide with each other, all while literally making life and death decisions every minute of their shift. They work long rotating days/evenings/midnights with no differentiation for weekends/holidays.
They are so focused, that they have to take regulated breaks away from their position to allow themselves from becoming mentally fatigued because if they blink for one second too long, thousands of people can die.
It’s tough to maintain a relationship with someone who’s always running on fumes and living with a background hum of anxiety that lingers for months even after their shift ends.
Private military contractor
Seriously, who’d find the thought of your mercenary boyfriend potentially dead or injured abroad on a hush-hush mission enjoyable for weeks or months on end? Not being able to talk to him, or not knowing when you can talk to him or when he’ll be home sounds like a blast.
Slowly but surely, that takes a toll on your emotional well-being. You’re scared every second of the day wondering where he is. You start feeling like you’re single again because you spend so much time apart.
It’s emotionally crippling knowing you can’t count on ever really having him around for weeks or months on end.
High-stakes professional poker player
While the allure of casinos and chasing that massive win might seem thrilling, it’s a cycle of emotional highs and lows and financial peril that most women simply won’t tolerate.
His paychecks will be all over the map, and he will work nights then sleep days. When he’s on a winning streak, he’s incredibly joyful and splurges readily. Lose a chunk of cash? Expect nothing but downcast silences when he’s losing.
Your future together will always be too uncertain to plan for, let alone purchase property or even count on him for rent.
Deep-sea saturation diver
This is not a job where you punch in and punch out at the end of your shift. Saturation divers live and work in pressurized environments for weeks at a time performing work miles below the ocean’s surface.
They work in icy cold darkness while under tremendous pressure and can go weeks with minimal to no contact with the outside world. After finishing their work, they must then spend days, sometimes weeks decompressing before they can safely return to the surface.
Imagine attempting a relationship when your partner’s completely out of reach for weeks and their job is one of the most lethal out there.
Clinical trial manager
It doesn’t seem like a hard job to have right off the bat, but trust me it can be completely different.
He handles the day-to-day lives of professional guinea pigs whose job it is to test pharmaceutical drugs that haven’t been proven safe for humans.
There are long hours, deadlines and pressure from unexpected medical problems or reactions that can occur. And this pressure often follows them home, making it harder to switch off after work.
Even in some companies, you’ll find limited scope for climbing the ladder, which can become quite vexing.
Crisis hostage negotiator
You literally never clock out of this job.
His life consists of periods of high-adrenaline, life-threatening encounters with people who may or may not kill him, and then he goes home to wait for his phone to ring and interrupt him at dinner, a funeral, or even the birth of one of his children.
The sheer emotional weight of his work leaves him drained upon returning home, withdrawn and unable to shift from crisis mode to being present for you. Being his girlfriend means you’re often overshadowed by the relentless trauma he faces every single day.
Commercial extreme crop dusting pilot
Yeah, okay, super-specific aviation job. However, when you stop and consider the actual work these guys do, it’s downright scary.
They fly super-agile aircraft mere feet off the ground making banked turns at freeway speeds full of high volume toxic chemicals. The mortality rate for this job is insane.
If you’re his partner, you won’t be concerned with him losing his pilot’s license anymore; your fear is for his life before noon. There’s no future when you live in constant legitimate fear like that.
Ethical hacker for the NSA (or similar agency)
It’s true that his job is very patriotic and he works with some cutting edge technology. However, the need for secrecy is absolutely unavoidable.
He can’t tell you what he does for a living, where he is traveling when he’s overseas or why he sometimes works late. He can’t travel to certain countries. He can’t associate with certain people. He has basically no Internet footprint whatsoever.
You question what parts of his life are real and what parts are fabricated “cover”, making any genuine intimacy impossible.
Exotic animal smuggling interdiction agent
It sounds noble. His work involves a thrilling battle against poachers, safeguarding animals from suffering a fate of extinction.
But it’s a job built on homicide investigations, rotting corpses, and the absolute worst humanity has to offer. You send him to lawless countries for months at a time to combat highly-organized crime syndicates. You watch him disappear into a dangerous world of worst-case-scenarios, full-time.
You share your partner with the most horrific cruelty imaginable, the kind that defines monstrous acts. And when he comes home at the end of the day, he has successfully made countless powerful enemies that know his name.
Celebrity close protection bodyguard
It doesn’t mean you get to be a suave secret agent. It means you get to be a professional shadow.
He must always be within ten feet of his principal at all times, whether it be an all-night rave or private dinner or overseas trips. His schedule is based solely around the whims of a stranger.
He works nights, weekends, travels constantly, and has a profession that revolves around another person’s ego and safety. He literally has no time for a social life of his own.
Demolition expert specializing in urban controlled collapse
He blows up tons of buildings containing years of human labor into nothingness in a matter of methodically orchestrated, explosive seconds.
It’s impressive work, but that means he travels all over to major cities at weird hours and can’t make one mistake.
Dating him is a lesson in physics and schedules. A woman can’t book a weekend getaway because his demolition window might be needed for a sudden 20-story hotel implosion.
Bio-safety engineer
He’s more than an engineer; his daily work involves handling toxic waste, anthrax, and nuclear materials. It’s a job where he literally deals with things designed to kill millions daily.
Coupled with outrageous safety restrictions because of the fact that one paperwork mistake can kill countless people, he’s a man of extreme, razor-like precision.
You simply can’t afford to relax in his profession, so a serene household just isn’t in the cards.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
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