I live in Harrisburg, Pa. My wife lives in New Orleans. Since last November, we’ve seen each other just four days a month. Missing a Friday-night plane is catastrophic.
I made the flight, but the ordeal wasn’t over. Still ahead was a sweaty first leg riding the middle seat in cattle class, a tedious layover complete with nasty airport pizza and a final flight marked by tortured sleep and that bizarre airplane reading in which you take in volumes and retain nothing.
My wife picked me up in a car without air conditioning because it’s hard to get your Jetta serviced when you live alone. And, for a while, things were good. We slept in Saturday, played with the dogs and worked on the house. Then, Sunday came, as it always does, and I started to get anxious, as I always do. It’s times like these that I understand why our dogs chew the doorjamb when we leave.
Such is the world of commuter marriage, a tormented state that nearly every couple in my circle of thirtysomething friends has experienced in recent years as they struggle to keep two careers equally juiced. Loosely interpreted, we are what the writer Douglas Copeland called the “poverty jet set.” We move a lot. Often, one stays longer than the other–and not just to sell the house. One stays to finish grad school, to wrap up a job or to take the time to find the right post in the promised land that spousy has jetted off to.
My commuter-couple friends have found many ways to divide themselves. Berkeley and New York. New York and Boston. Ohio and New Orleans. When we announced our separation, they whispered dark warnings.
But I had a job offer. Bigger paper. Better beat. More money. Glen the Reporter was turning 30 this year and I wanted to take the job. Petula, meanwhile, was at the top of her game at a newspaper in New Orleans and didn’t feel ready to leave.
Our professional situations were as different as Cajun and Amish. So I suggested that we do it the hard way. After six years of living together and almost two years of marriage, we’d live apart for a short period. Six months, max. I said things like: “This way, we can both keep moving forward.”
It felt cool and cosmopolitan–for about two weeks. Soon, however, it became an emotional triathlon in which airplanes became more familiar than cars and I had conjugal visits even as a free man.
The cost of living doubled. I acquired seven frequent-flier accounts. The cell phone became a permanent appendage as we tried in vain to provide 24-hour access to one another.
She had to answer questions daily from co-workers about when and if she was going to move. I got weird Machiavellian advice from my male friends on how best to manipulate my wife to join me.
Bills went unpaid past the 30-day mark as we sank into financial oblivion. Who had paid what? It didn’t matter–we couldn’t afford “bicoastal” living anyway. All arguments ended with “you’re the one who left.”
We’ve started seeing a whole team of shrinks: his, hers and, coming soon, ours. We’re learning how to cope with long-distance living and getting to know terms like “loving behavior,” “work addiction” and “Paxil.”
Strangest of all are the cyberdates: watching the same thing on TV and commenting in real time over an open, expensive phone line. But what are you supposed to do when faced with the question: how much is a night together worth?
Of course, there are some small advantages. She can watch all the foreign movies she wants and eat sushi for lunch and dinner. I can play Wiffle ball in the living room and clean the bathtub with a mop. But it’s no substitute for a morning walk with the dogs, bitching after work or a giddy trip to Home Depot after a day of painting.
Eleven months into this thing, I’m not sure how it ends. We’re happily married–we just don’t live together. Nothing prepares you for this, not the advice of parents or priests or colleagues. Not even friends can offer much instruction. They took turns following one another, gutted it out until they got two good jobs or made Hillary-style sacrifices. One retook the bar exam in another state. Another went from six-figure TV producer to Internet-based freelancer.
All seem to be solutions with teeth–like our dogs chewing the doorjamb.
