Hey girls,

I just really feel like I need some advice to help my partner out!!

Both of us are currently working on a dairy farm for a 4 month period in order to get a visa for Australia. We’ve been here 3 months now but it’s all starting to take its toll on us!

Neither of us are farmers at allll.. both from a city & always lived in a city.

The thing is that the days here are really long (start at 3am and finish around 5pm with a 3h break)

The work is quite strenuous but we were coping fine.

Basically, my hours got cut due to there not being much work now that the season is finishing up but because of my boyfriend being male (obviously haha) they call him in to do extra shifts of proper manual labor. Bless his heart, he takes all the shifts to make up for the money I’m losing by doing fuck all hours. I have asked the manager for more work to take the load off him so he doesn’t feel like he has to work so much however the manager won’t let me do anything other than milk the cows and look after the calves.

I am getting 1 or 2 days off a week whilst he’s literally getting nothing and if he does manage a day off he always gets a call to come in. We live on the farm so it’s hard for him to avoid it.

He’s never had problems sleeping for as long as we’ve shared a bed together but over the last few weeks he is having such a restless sleep and sometimes waking up screaming.. he’s grinding his teeth at night and it’s just horrific to lie beside him not able to help him!

He’s always waking up at random times during the night checking the time because he’s so worried he will sleep in. He only gets around 4-5 hours of sleep a night as it is and that’s on a good night.

Right now he seems more worried about me than himself as it was Christmas and I was a little home sick - we’re from Ireland but now are living in Australia.

As soon as he gets off work rather than just having a shower and a quick bite to eat and getting some rest he’s more concerned with spending some time with me because we’ve not seen each other all day.

I have told him we can quit this place and just forget it but he is literally not even humoring the idea. He thinks if he can put in as many hours as humanly possible it will be worth it as it’s only a few more weeks and we will have our visas and be out of here for good.

I’m just so worried about him and I really don’t know what I can do to help! He is my main priority out here and he’s literally been my rock but now I just feel pathetic because there’s literally nothing I can do to take the weight off his shoulders.

Has anybody dealt with someone who was completely burning themselves out? How did you deal with it?

I know there’s only a few weeks left of this but I honestly can’t stand to watch him it’s absolutely breaking my heart.

He is such a lovely person and he would never even admit to me that he’s slightly upset or stressed in anyway because he doesn’t want to burden but I have to do something to help!

Thanks guys for any responses/ideas..

- a very concerned girlfriend 😭