Relationships

Love, friendship and family, on a schedule that rarely cooperates.

Rotas, exams and moves put pressure on every relationship a doctor has. We write about partners, friends and family with the seriousness they deserve: drawn from real experience, free of gender stereotypes, and never treating people as problems to be solved.

Dating
Meeting people when your evenings belong to the hospital.
Marriage
Partnership, and the two careers inside it.
Friendship
Keeping the friends who knew you before medicine.
Family
Parents, children and the expectations in between.

Two people walking side by side along a seafront promenade at dusk, seen from behind.

In relationships

Two coffee cups on a kitchen table beside a phone propped up for a video call, early evening light.

In preparation · Marriage

Long distance during residency

Two cities, two rotas and one shared calendar. Couples on what kept them close, and what nearly did not.

Two stethoscopes and two sets of keys on a hallway table, a shared calendar pinned above.

In preparation · Marriage

When both of you are doctors

Two rotas, two sets of exams and one household. Couples on whose career goes first, and how they decided.

In preparation · Dating

Dating when your evenings belong to the hospital

Cancelled plans, odd hours and the question of whether to date inside medicine. Doctors on what has actually worked.

In preparation · Friendship

The friends who knew you before medicine

They do not care about your rank or your rota. That is exactly why they matter.

In preparation · Family

The conversation with your parents about taking a year out

Two doctors, two families, two very different conversations about stepping off the expected path.

Pieces marked “In preparation” are being reported and written. Have an experience we should hear about? Write for us.

Collections

Read this together

Collection No. 05

Two Calendars

Love, friendship and family when medicine shares the house.

5 pieces in preparation

Elsewhere in Life

Time and energy
The hours that are yours, and the attention you bring to them.
Health
Looking after the body and mind that do the work.
Places
Where doctors travel, live and put down roots.
Taste
What doctors read, wear, use and enjoy.
Identity
Who you are when you are not being a doctor.

Across the site

Working abroad, on the Career desk

The Handover

A richer life, every Sunday.

One considered letter a week, with the best of the Life desk alongside everything else worth a doctor’s time.