I hear a lot about married couples living apart these days. I mean, a lot. There are a lot of APW readers and a lot of my friends doing it (please refer to this post on thriving despite hardships). This makes sense to me. The economy is an epic disaster, particularly for the young, so if you're young and ambitious, you take opportunities where you can get them... even if they are on opposite sides of the country. Plus, we're a country at war (whether or not we talk about it often enough), and there are tons of couples going through deployments, often over and over and over. The thing is, despite knowing that couples are in the trenches with this every single day, I've found very little discussion or support for this reality. I think it's a painful topic for us to discuss culturally ("How have we done this to our youth?"). It's easier to focus on the entitled young than on the sacrificing young. And the less we talk about a subject, the more shame builds, and the less we talk about it. So with that in mind, let's dive in to Lily's post on living 3,000 miles away from your spouse.

This week was spring break at the University of Maryland, where I work and go to school, so naturally I went to California to visit my husband. We got married last July and are currently living 3,000 miles away from each other. By choice.

You see, I had an amazing opportunity to pursue a master’s degree at the University of Maryland in College Student Personnel, where I get to think about all the things I love. I get to study counseling, and organizations, and how colleges work, and I get to do it for free, which is pretty unbelievable. I have an assistantship that lets me work in my field (student affairs, yay!) and gives me tuition remission, a stipend, and health insurance. My husband is also a smarty-pants and is working on his doctorate at the University of California, Santa Cruz, my alma mater, where we met (go Banana Slugs!). When I got my acceptance, it was unfathomable that I wouldn’t go. UMD was my reach school and, by far and away, the cheapest. No student loans and the best education? How could we turn that down? We got engaged, and I moved cross-country.

We got married the summer between the two years of my program for completely practical reasons. We wanted to be able to take advantage of the ease that marriage might give us when doing a national job search together. Since then we have spent about every other month together, since his schedule is very flexible while he finishes his dissertation. The last few months before we graduate and this long distance ends will be much harder, though, with less time together, and more time tending our separate homes.

I wish that this post could do something like what many other posts on APW do for me; give clarity, provide some a-ha moment about a shared experience, or analyze a phenomenon that some (or many?) of us experience. But in reality it is more an opportunity for me to lay this all out on the internet for others. Because it is at once the best and a totally stupid decision for us, and after eight months, I am starting to get tired of wrestling with it. Here are some things I think about often:

• How I talk about it with others: This is probably the most difficult. Very few people understand. Only others who have done it before, or who know people who have, don’t require a long explanation. These people are amazing and are a source of comfort, but I have stopped meeting them, because I have started to lie. I say “my husband is out of town” or “my husband travels a lot for work.” This is mostly for self-preservation, as it is tiring to have to explain the situation constantly. This all goes to hell though, when I want to tell a story about my husband's roommates. That phrase tends to get the most raised eyebrows. Continue reading Reclaiming Wife: Living Apart