Growing Up Together

When we got married, we were pretty poor. That’s one of the reasons we thought it was a good time to do it. We knew there would be gifts, and money, and we kind of wanted to cash in. I was starting my business and he was in grad school getting his Master’s in education. He wanted to be a teacher. We were on our way to having jobs we love and getting paid to do them. If there is a bigger dream than that in life, I don’t know it. Oh, and we loved each other too. I just had no idea that getting there would be so hard, and how much I would have to grow up.

Being financially strapped was hard. It caused fights when there were none. Fights of pure stress that had nothing to do with each other. But on the whole, we got through it okay. We learned about ourselves, set up some great financial habits for the future, and learned that money surely makes life easier, even though it isn’t everything.

What I am shocked to realize now is that we did better as a couple when we were struggling than we did once we started making money.

Being married to a grad school student is hard. The long hours and late nights leave little room for connecting with your spouse. It was the first time in our nine-year relationship that I didn’t feel like I could have his attention whenever I wanted. And I didn’t like it. But grad school was a finite experience, and it would lead to better things ahead. I was able to get through it by thinking of the future—he would be paid more with a Master’s, it would create long-term financial stability for the both of us—it seemed like a pretty grown-up thought.

After a year and half of marriage and ten and half years together, he got a full time teaching job. We were thrilled and scared shitless. He got the call about a week before school started, so we ran around like crazy to get prepared. I told myself that things would change. I told myself that he would need a lot of support. I told myself that my job in this new life would be to help him as much as possible. I would be, for lack of a better term, “the dutiful wife.”

So I ran around trying to make his life simpler. I did all the chores, the grocery shopping, and made his lunch every day. I let him make up sleep on the weekends instead of spending much needed time with me. If he came home from work exhausted, which was every day, I allowed him to rest on the couch while I made dinner. In my mind, I was helping out. But I think that I imagined a short adjustment period before everything would get back to how it used to be. I could tough it out for a few months, maybe a year, as long as everything went back to normal. I had no idea that we were embarking on a new normal, that our lives would not go back to that previous normal, so long as he had this full-time job.

I began to pitch a lot of fits. Not only that, but really passive aggressive fits. I would stew for days, mad at him for not recognizing my efforts and thanking me for supporting him so well, mad that he didn’t seem to care that I was hurting. I constantly thought, “Why can’t he see how hard I’m working and throw me a bone?” I made the entire experience about myself, without a thought to what he was going through. I was helping out as a form of manipulation. And that wasn’t fair.

He was in the middle of the hardest thing he’d ever done, overwhelmed physically, emotionally, and mentally. Because he had so little to give me at the end of the day, it turned into an endless tug of war. Me always wanting more than he was able to give. Him always feeling stressed both at work and home. Once I realized this scenario wasn’t going away any time soon, I started a new narrative in my head. I convinced myself that he needed to figure out a way to give me everything I wanted and have this job, because that’s what people do. In my life, I would not settle for less, I deserved to have everything—it was his job to give it to me, no matter how hard it was for him. That is what you do when you love someone, you don’t let them suffer. Never once did I think about changing my perspective.

I have family members that have very traditional marriages where the woman does all the “women’s work” and the man does all the “man’s work,” and I knew from a young age that it wasn’t something I wanted. I was terrified doing the dishes ninety percent of the time would guarantee us that future, and I refused to be that couple fifty years down the road, serving my husband ice cream after dinner while he sat on the couch with his pants unbuttoned. I would not become that stereotype. However, I spent so much time worrying about what we might become, that I didn’t realize we could make that choice for ourselves. Doing the dishes didn’t make me a 1950s housewife.

The worst thing was how I sabotaged what little time we could spend together. I knew I was doing it, yet felt powerless to stop. I would get so excited for the weekend to hang out with him, and then when all he wanted to do was rest I would get mad at him for not making the best of it.

It was a slow process, growing up. It’s still going on as we speak, but we take it one step at a time. After his first year teaching, we knew it had been a disaster, we knew we had to make some changes. We sat down and told each other what we needed from the other: I needed him to help me make dinner every night and then eat with me, and to spend some time with me after he finished working each night before he went to bed. He needed me to leave him alone completely while he was working—I was famous for going into the office and interrupting him. Even with these seemingly minor changes, things got a lot better.

I decided to stop being passive aggressive. Upon turning thirty, I knew it had to stop—it would be my gift to my husband and myself. It took a couple of years for me to completely get through it, but the other side is amazing. If I can now pat myself on the back, it’s the absolute best thing I ever did for my relationship. We address issues as they arise, instead of stewing for days.

Then, I learned to let go. So I do the dishes more than him, so what? I’ve already spent too much time needing everything to be exactly split down the middle—marriage just doesn’t work like that. Don’t get me wrong, I still make sure we get exactly the same amount of ice cream if we share, but I worry less about absolute balance. It also helps to let go of needing the dishes to always be done. If I choose to have a beer with my husband, they will still be there when we’re done.

When I look back now, I see an immature little girl struggling with a really big change in her life. Turns out, I don’t like change. And now that I am on the other side, part of me thinks all I really needed was time to get used to it, time to let go of a lot of baggage that I didn’t even know I had. Teaching is hard. It takes more than most people have to give. I like to think that I am now truly that supportive wife I was trying to be back them. I understand what he’s going through and speak up when I need support too. We make the absolute most of our time together now. We try to spend our summers abroad, since I have my own company and that allows for flexibility in my schedule.

It’s still a rough adjustment every year when he goes back to school—especially since we really make the most of the summers, soaking up every minute together. But for me, knowing what is coming helps the transition each time. I’ve gotten pretty good at understanding what I’m annoyed about, and fixing that specific issue or just moving forward. You know, since I’m grown-up and all.