Marriage counseling

To paraphrase an alum speaking to our class on Thursday: “If you start a business, go to marriage counseling immediately.  Start going as soon as possible.”  The point, obviously is not that starting businesses ruins relationships, but it definitely can, and one should take precaution to safeguard against that at the soonest moment possible.

From another alum (again, paraphrased): “You can juggle a lot of balls in life – career, hobbies, friends, and family, but remember that the family ball is glass.  You can drop the others and pick them back up, but if the family ball drops it is usually broken.”

I have a non-trivial list of advice similar to the above from alumni speakers (I’m taking a lot of speakers series classes, it is AWESOME).  I’m sure this advice resonates more with some students than others (I probably would not have thought it was particularly insightful if I were still single), but it surely resonates with me.  My wife and I will have been married for seven years next month, and ours is a tale of her constantly taking one for the team in terms of career, geographic location, and time management.

Our engagement and marriage has included the following highlights for my wife:

1. Me being in Korea for the duration of our engagement and not participating in nearly any wedding planning;

2. Her moving cross country and changing jobs following our wedding;

3. Her switching jobs twice in Washington to find something that was both enjoyable and did not consist of a huge commute, while we lived convenient to my requirements;

4. Me spending another year overseas between months 18-30 of our marriage;

5. Me getting out of the Army and finding another job in the Midwest, forcing her to abandon her most recent job after a year in the position;

6. Me getting moved to California by my company after seven months in the Midwest, though at least she found a job where she could work remotely;

7. Me deciding after a year in California that I wanted to go to business school and then only looking at schools on the East Coast;

8. Us moving to Charlottesville, where she had to again look for work, choosing a job about a year into our time here;

9. Me wanting to move to Atlanta following school for career reasons, despite having an option to go to DC, which would have made her next job search far easier;

10. Me taking a job that will require a tremendous amount of travel, meaning that we will move to a new city and I will promptly leave 50% of the time.

In conclusion, my career choices have caused my wife to move from Maryland to Washington to Illinois to California to Virginia to Georgia, endure my being gone repeatedly (I’m assuming this is a hardship, but who knows), deal with late night and weekend phone calls regarding crazy Soldier tricks or ridiculous shipping issues, the constant stress of looking for new jobs, and me constantly thinking about the next complicated life choice I want to make that requires us to put our entire life into boxes and completely start over socially in cities where she has never lived.  When I write all of that out I look like kind of a jerk.

But in spite of the ridiculousness of it all, my wife is both supportive and optimistic about the constant upheaval.  I’m sure she would like a bit more stability, and we are honestly always looking for it, but she rolls with the changes and wears a smile while doing it.  What I’m trying to say is that she makes it all possible.  I’ve asked a lot (and hopefully given a decent amount as well), and thus far we haven’t collectively dropped the glass ball.  But it is good to be reminded that I’m not actually juggling it all alone, and that this is a two person job.

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