Tours, shoots and late nights: the body and relationships in creative careers

“I’ve been home for three days, and I still feel as if I’m on the road.”

It could be a drummer saying this after three weeks on tour, a camera operator after a month on location, an actor at the end of the festival season, or a designer after a night when the project went off at four in the morning. The body has come home, but the mind hasn’t. The partner, who has held everyday life together alone all this time, is waiting for them to “come back”. And instead of relief there is friction: she feels surplus to requirements, he feels that nobody understands him.

We like to talk about creative careers as freedom. No boss, no clocking in at eight, doing what you love. But that very freedom often takes the shape of a schedule that fits nothing — not sleep, not your partner’s job, not nursery. In this post I write about what irregular hours, long absences and night work do to the body and to relationships, and about what you can do so that coming home doesn’t cost you an argument every time.

The price that isn’t on the poster

When an audience sees a concert, a premiere or a film, they see two hours. They don’t see the overnight drive, the hotel room where you can’t fall asleep because the adrenaline won’t let you, the early start for a shooting day, and the weeks when you are not home for a single birthday.

Researchers Sally Anne Gross and George Musgrave of the University of Westminster set out to ask musicians systematically about their wellbeing. In their British survey of more than two thousand musicians, around 71 per cent said they had experienced anxiety or panic attacks, and more than two thirds had experienced depression too. When they spoke to individuals in more depth, people were not only complaining about uncertain income. They talked about disordered sleep, about their work also being their identity, and about relationships that are hard to sustain when you never know where you will be in a fortnight.

The figure doesn’t mean that a creative career causes mental health problems. It does mean that a life that looks like a dream from the outside often means sustained strain from the inside — and that this strain is largely built from things that are rarely spoken about: rhythm, absence and tiredness.

The body makes no exceptions

Each of us has an internal clock, a circadian rhythm, which governs when we feel sleepy, when we are hungry, when we have the most energy and when the body releases which hormones. This clock takes its cues from light, from meals and from regularity. It does not take its cues from the date of the premiere.

When someone performs at nine in the evening, by eleven they are at the peak of arousal. The body is full of adrenaline, the heart is beating faster, the mind is sharp. Falling asleep at midnight is close to impossible. Sleep shifts into the morning, getting up shifts to midday, and if the next day brings travel or an early call, sleep runs short. Film and television shoots are often the reverse — early starts, long days, night shoots in between — and the clock is pushed back and forth as it is for shift workers.

Research on shift work is fairly clear here. A review by Göran Kecklund and John Axelsson sums up that long-term work at unusual hours and lack of sleep are linked with a higher risk of metabolic and cardiovascular problems, of fatigue-related accidents and of lower mood. Creative workers are usually not included in these studies, because they don’t have “shifts” in the classic sense. But the body doesn’t know whether it works in a factory or on a stage. It only knows that it sleeps at the wrong time and too little.

Alcohol as a way to switch off

Anyone who has worked in a creative environment knows that alcohol is often part of the working day. A drink after the show, a toast at the end of a shoot, a glass backstage to come down. I don’t want to moralise. But it matters to understand why alcohol “works” so well here — and why it doesn’t.

After a performance the body is in a state of high arousal. Alcohol brings that arousal down quickly and helps you fall asleep sooner. A review by Irshaad Ebrahim and colleagues, summarising decades of laboratory research, shows the other side: in the first half of the night alcohol deepens sleep, but in the second half it fragments it, reduces the share of REM sleep and increases the number of awakenings. You fall asleep faster and rest worse. You can read more in the knowledge base under alcohol and sleep.

On tour or during a shoot, where sleep is already scarce, this creates a vicious circle: tiredness during the day, more coffee and energy drinks to work, more alcohol to switch off. In the relationship it often shows up as irritability and a short fuse precisely when patience is most needed. I have written more about how drinking gets normalised in Slovenian families in Alcohol in the Slovenian family: how it is normalised until it breaks. If you notice that you can no longer fall asleep without a drink, or that drinking after shows is slipping out of control, that is a good reason to talk to your GP.

An absence that stays in the room

Lisa Diamond and colleagues followed couples in which one partner went away for a few days. During the separation participants reported more distress and poorer sleep, and among those who generally feared abandonment more in relationships the changes were more pronounced — including in levels of the stress hormone cortisol. When the partner returned, these changes largely settled.

This study is interesting because it is about short trips, not three-week tours or months of filming. But it shows something important: absence isn’t only a practical problem of who will take the child to the doctor. It is also an emotional strain that is written into the body — including the body of the one who stays at home.

In relational family therapy, in which I am training, we look at this through the lens of attachment. A partner’s absence wakes old patterns in us. Someone who learned in childhood that people disappear will find it harder to stay calm during a partner’s tour. Someone who learned that it is safer to be alone will organise life at home so well in that time that the partner’s return feels almost like a disruption. Both responses are understandable. And both collide at the moment of return.

Coming home is the hardest part

The paradox creative people often describe is that coming back is harder than leaving. On the road life is simple: one task, one crew, a clear schedule, food on the table, applause in the evening. At home there are bills, decisions, children who have got used to a different routine, and a partner with their own expectations.

This transition has a few typical layers:

• The drop after the high. After weeks of adrenaline and attention comes emptiness. There is no applause, no crew, nobody needs your talent for the washing-up. Many people experience it as a mild low that lasts a few days.
• A stranger in your own home. While you were away, a new order took shape at home. The one returning doesn’t know it, and every attempt to do something “the old way” can come across as criticism.
• Invisible work at home. The partner who stayed has often done an enormous amount, but nobody writes reviews of it. When the artist comes back and talks about the concerts, it can stir the feeling that this work went unnoticed.
• Tired and restless at once. The body is exhausted, yet the inner clock is still set to night life. Sleep is broken, patience is thin.

When these layers add up, an argument is almost inevitable. And because it repeats after every tour, the couple begins to believe that the problem lies in them rather than in the transition.

What it sounds like in conversation

One such conversation might sound like this (a composite conversation, not a real person):

“Every time you come back it’s the same. The first day you’re happy, the second day you’re already correcting how I stack the dishes.”
“Because it feels as if I was never here. As if there’s no room for me.”
“I was alone with the two kids for three weeks. I made room so I could survive.”
“I know. It’s just … out there I’m someone. Here I don’t know what I am.”
“And here I know exactly what I am. Everything.”

There is no villain in this short exchange. One of them misses feeling important, the other misses recognition for having carried everything. While the argument circles around the dishes, neither need comes to the surface. Once they manage to put it into words, the conversation changes. I have written more about how unspoken needs hide beneath recurring arguments in It is not about the dishes: what really lies underneath recurring arguments.

Couples like this often fall into a familiar dance as well: on return one seeks closeness, the other withdraws because they are still in their own rhythm, and the first pushes harder. This pattern is described in The anxious and the avoidant partner: why these two find each other, and how to leave the loop. For creative people the schedule amplifies it, because departures and returns repeat like clockwork.

Sleep as a joint project

Because sleep and relationships are so closely linked, it is worth treating sleep as something that concerns you both. After a sleepless night emotions burn faster and we forgive less easily — I have written about this in Sleep and emotion: why everything hurts more after a bad night. Someone who comes back from a tour and spends the first week sleeping three hours at the wrong time will find it hard to be a patient partner, however much they want to be.

A few things that often help creative people:

• Bringing the clock back gradually. Instead of trying to go straight back to sleeping at eleven after a tour, shift your sleep time by an hour or two each day. Morning light at the same time helps the internal clock more than anything else.
• Keeping track of sleep. A short sleep diary in the days after returning shows you when and how much you sleep — and often how much the evening drink affects it.
• Separate sleep rhythms without shame. Some couples sleep apart for a few nights after a tour so they don’t wake each other. That is not a sign of distance, as long as you agree on it openly and seek each other out during the day.

If sleep stays broken for weeks after you return, though, this may be the start of chronic insomnia. The best-researched route then is cognitive behavioural therapy, which I have written about in Cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I): the method that works better than pills, together with a visit to your doctor.

Exercise: a homecoming ritual

Because coming home is the hardest part, it deserves some structure. You can do the following exercise today, even if the next tour or shoot is still weeks away.

1. Agree on a transition time. Decide together how long the one returning needs after arriving before they are really “home” — half an hour of quiet, a walk, a shower. This isn’t rejection, it is a transition.
2. A first day with no decisions. On the day of return, don’t decide anything important and don’t open old topics. Two tired people listen badly.
3. Ask first, then tell. The one returning should first ask, “How was it for you?” and listen for at least ten minutes before starting on their own story. The one who stayed home should then listen to the stories from the road with genuine interest.
4. Name the invisible work. Each of you says one thing the other did during this time that may have gone unnoticed. Recognition is often more soothing than a present.
5. Write down what helped. A few days after the return, write down together what worked this time and what didn’t. Next time you won’t be starting from scratch.

The exercise won’t remove the friction. But it lowers the chance that friction takes up all the space, and it helps keep an argument about the dishes from turning into an argument about whether you are right for each other at all.

Where this view is not enough

It would be too simple to say that schedules are to blame for every relationship problem creative people have. Some things call for a different perspective.

First, some couples live very well with distance. Absence gives them space, homecomings are a celebration, and the schedule is part of an arrangement they both choose. If that is how you live and you are both content, nothing written here is a hint that you should change anything.

Second, sometimes the schedule is not the cause but the excuse. A tour can be a way to avoid difficulties at home — and some people unconsciously take on more and more work precisely because things are tense at home. In that case, sorting out sleep and agreeing on phone calls won’t be enough. The question lies elsewhere: what is happening in the relationship that makes leaving easier than staying?

Third, what looks like the effect of tiredness may also be depression, an anxiety disorder or an addiction that needs medical help. If the low after returning lasts for weeks, if you can no longer work or sleep without alcohol or other substances, or if thoughts appear that nothing makes sense, contact your GP. If you are in acute distress in Slovenia, you can call the Klic v duševni stiski helpline on 01 520 99 00 (every day from 7 pm to 7 am) or the Samaritans helpline (Zaupni telefon Samarijan) on 116 123 (24 hours a day), and in an emergency 112.

And fourth, not all creative people travel. A writer who works at night because she looks after the children during the day, or a designer who works until three in the morning for weeks because of deadlines, live with the same broken rhythm, but without the romantic frame of a tour. Their difficulties are just as real, even if nobody photographs their nights.

What can help the relationship in the long run

Relationship researcher John Gottman has emphasised in his work that relationships don’t rest on grand gestures but on small moments when partners turn towards each other. For couples living in mismatched rhythms there are fewer of these moments — so they need to be more deliberate.

This can mean things that sound almost too simple: a short message before the show that isn’t about logistics. A question about your partner’s day that you ask because you are interested, not out of duty. A photo from the dressing room that says you are thinking of them. In couples where both are artists, rivalry and the question of whose career comes first are added to the mix — that will be the subject of Creative couples: when both are artists.

If the arguments go round in a circle you can’t stop on your own, couples therapy can be the place where that circle is seen from the outside for the first time. Not so that anyone stops creating, but so that work and the relationship can live side by side. Sessions take place in person in Ljubljana, and I also work in English. For a couple with an irregular schedule that means finding a time when you are both at home — and that search is often the first step in itself.

What to remember

• Irregular hours, night work and long absences strain the body just as shift work does — even when they come with applause.
• Alcohol after a show helps you fall asleep but breaks up the second half of the night; you rest worse.
• The partner who stays at home feels the absence too — in the body, in sleep and in how much they carry alone.
• Coming home is often the hardest part; a homecoming ritual and recognising invisible work reduce friction.
• If the schedule becomes an excuse, or if low mood, insomnia or drinking persist, the answer lies elsewhere — in a conversation about the relationship or with a doctor.