Dating/Relationships During Residency

A perspective from someone not in medicine who started dating an intern resident

Background: I started dating Dr. Viv during her 1st/intern year in her med-peds (Internal Medicine-Pediatrics) residency. I’m now married to her, and she’s in the middle of the third year of her med/peds nephrology fellowship.

I would not recommend most people to start dating during residency, particularly intern year. But why not?

Most people get into relationships to be with someone and enjoy life together. Residency isn’t conducive to that. The majority of residency is working at the hospital, writing notes wherever they are (including home), and sleeping. There is no time for much else. You see that I left out eating and drinking? They sneak those in sometimes, but often go the entire day without eating or drinking.

How grueling are the work hours? The system has convinced these poor overworked healthcare workers that having a normal weekend off is amazing enough to warrant calling them “Golden Weekends”.

For the first year, they are essentially starting a new job every month since they are going on rotations they’ve never done before. Can you imagine having a new boss, new colleagues, and new rules/culture to learn every month?!

How did Dr. Viv and I make it work?

Well, I had to sacrifice what a typical dating life would be. I entered the relationship after researching about residency and watching Scrubs (Fun fact: Dr. Cox is based on a doctor Dr. Viv trained with).

Starting from the first date, Dr. Viv was late because of work. This is probably the biggest challenge of dating in residency. Their schedule is entirely unpredictable. You know that family dinner, that ceremony, that wedding? It’s better to have no expectations of having them attend. And if they do end up going, it’s a brilliant surprise!

Never wait for them for dinner. I repeat, never wait for them for dinner. You’ll end up eating late and alone. I learned this lesson far too many times.

When did we spend time together? There are rare days when you know they will have off (but they can often be swapped with others); take advantage of those days to do something out of the routine (though, they may want to just stay home…).

Because so much time is spent on work, you must find creative ways to spend time together. After our second date, I spent time with Dr. Viv while she was home writing notes and eating dinner; often, we worked in parallel and got to know each other more during breaks. Then, I started driving her to and from work; it may seem inconsequential, but I found them invaluable to our relationship.

The house errands were always my job. I “folded” so many pairs of scrubs (“Folded” in quotes because I still don’t know if I’m doing it properly). Doing these tasks helped relieve the stress on Dr. Viv and allowed us to do more enjoyable things when she had free time.

Was I afraid that I would cause Dr. Viv learned helplessness with everything I was doing? Parts of me were because of my experience of learned helplessness, but then I remembered what she was going through (residency, a concept formed by a cocaine-addicted surgeon).

So, I did anything to support Dr. Viv. There were many nights of tears where I felt like I couldn’t help, but just being there for her to lean on was good enough. And I would remind her that we had friends she could talk to who may better understand what she is going through (and she also had a therapist). I like to think that I was often that beam of sunshine on a cloudy day, particularly with my terrible jokes and lack of understanding of the human body.

All the not-in-medicine partners I’ve met in residency/fellowship have been selfless and independent. And it’s not by accident. So many people would be frustrated by how much residency consumes the residents and the people around them, but the partners live through it without complaint. These partners inspire me to be a better partner to Dr. Viv.

Extremely independent is also a trait I’ve noticed in not-in-medicine partners. They tend to keep busy with work (because residency salaries are terrible) and/or take up hobbies. For me, work and photography were my outlets; seeing Dr. Viv work so hard motivated me tremendously. Just because your partner is going to residency shouldn’t mean you shouldn’t grow as an individual.

I love my independent time. I think residency helped Dr. Viv and I set the boundaries for our relationship going forward.

Do you like to listen to work talk? All discussions always lead back to medicine, whether informational, patients, treatments, consults, or workplace gossip. It ALWAYS leads back to medicine. I try to learn during most of the discussion so I often interrupt and ask for not-in-medicine translations. This is fun for me and I’ve learned a ton, but other partners often zone out and do their own thing.

Dr. Viv and I acknowledged that I won’t and can’t be the only person she talks to about challenges. There are countless scenarios that I cannot start to comprehend. I’m grateful that we have an amazing support system that we can go to for various issues. These people were other medical residents or friends from med school.

My advice to partners of residents/fellow is to integrate yourself with your partner’s program. If you’re invited to “wellness” events, go. If there’s a dinner, go. Go to anything that will help you meet and get to know other people. These people are going through the same time and will become your support system for life. I went to events even if Dr. Viv couldn’t make it!

If you’re dating a residency for the money, please please please don’t. They’re poor! If you’re doing it for the money, you should probably just skip to someone who has gone through residency and is making more money (emphasis on more, since not all doctors make surgeon salaries; future post to come on that). Or even better, don’t marry a doctor at all; they often come with loans, and there are better money-making occupations out there.

Residency is where you’ll meet some of your best friends (like I did through Dr. Viv!). Embrace the process. You’ll experience things that most people will not and it will make you a better human. It will probably even come with fun little stories too; like Dr. Viv gave me my first COVID vaccine. I even have a fun Instagram account about being a not-in-medicine partner (@NotInMedicine).