The reactions to us announcing we’d be living apart while the hubster starts his ER Residency were somewhat varied. Some people were supportive and great. And some people left me thinking, “You know, people can be real aholes sometimes.”
Just about 3 months ago, the hubster left South Florida for the frozen tundra of Southeast Michigan. I won’t get into the details of that day. It was a blurry mess of ice cream, tears and lots of reality trash TV to keep my mind off of having just waved goodbye to my husband.
I’m asked about it a lot, so here we go.
How are we doing with living apart?
We’ve seen each other about once every 3 weeks. I’m flying there or he’s flying here. Flights haven’t been too obnoxiously priced just yet and we all know the thrill I get just flying for funzies, so I’m totally okay with it. Right now, though, we don’t have any flights planned until the beginning of November. <deep breath>
I had to learn how to depend on myself from a very young age. The transition back to living alone wasn’t as frightening as everyone was trying to convince me it would be. I know I have a unique history, but being on my own wasn’t the scary part. Choking on a piece of steak and not having anyone to do the Heimlich on me, now THAT scares me more.
Med school prepared us well. I truly believe people either didn’t believe me when I said you have to be okay being alone when you have a med student spouse OR they truly don’t understand the grueling hours involved in becoming a doctor. Very often he’d be 10 feet away in his office, but utterly unavailable to have a normal conversation. Sort of like what we’re doing now.
With his current schedule, I’d barely be seeing him. He was working night shifts there for awhile and we’d really have to figure out our phone calls. It basically was me talking to him for 15 minutes while I was leaving work and he was heading into work. If we lived with each other – I wouldn’t have seen him anyway.
Planning ahead prevents misunderstandings. We learned we needed to layout when we’d have our Facetime calls or phone calls ahead of time. This helps because his schedule can change week to week and I’m also type-A and want to scream when the phone rings just as I’ve sat down for the first time all day. (I swear I’m lovable.)
Creativity is key. We went to the movies together this weekend. 1,300 miles apart. We saw Sully. HIGHLY recommend it. You’ll be fist pumping, “America, F*ck yeah.” as you’re leaving.
We’ve had our moments. This past week, after especially unnecessarily mean things happened at work, not being able to exercise due to my ankle, a lack of response from someone I reached out to which has me feeling like crap, and quite frankly, coming home unable to just hug my husband, I had a meltdown. Full on, ugly-cry meltdown. The hubster listened and encouraged me. (And I was somewhat thankful he wasn’t witnessing it.) I’ve noticed when I’m feeling down, it stings more when he’s not here.
We’ve said we’ll do a check-in with each other every 6 months to see how it’s going and reassess anything if necessary. So far, so good.
I mean, you guys, I put something in the fridge and it’s in the same damn place when I go back! HELL YEAH!
