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What you can do when your relationship is on the rocks

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How men can learn to navigate the stormy seas of emotion

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Dear Captain,

I (she/her, 30s) have been with my husband (he/him, 30s) for ten years now. We both enjoy traveling and we used to do it a lot more. I’m a freelancer who has always maintained a very flexible schedule and my husband’s job used to offer him a great deal of flexibility, too. Since we have no kids (and no plans for any), it was easy to take longer/more spontaneous trips. However, while the pandemic undeniably threw a huge wrench in our getaways, now there’s a different hitch.

My husband changed careers right when things slowly began reopening, and we basically haven’t traveled since. In his current job, he doesn’t have as much PTO as he did previously and it’s much harder to take more than a week off consecutively. I feel churlish complaining about this, because it’s the career path he’s wanted for a long time, that he’s worked hard to achieve, and that he’s very good at and well respected within. But travel used to be such a fun part of our relationship together. A good example of this is the two-week overseas trip we planned that got scuppered by COVID and still hasn’t happened four years later. I keep looking up itinerary ideas for that huge trip, or looking at old travel photos, or investigating new places to go, and then sighing and closing the window.

I know I shouldn’t let this fester. Our relationship is otherwise great, and I’m trying to find modifications like day trips or staycations, but it’s not the same. When I look at those old plans, which are now wildly out of date, I can’t help but have the thought that, by myself, I could have taken a trip like this every year. It’s a poisonous thought, and I recognize that. But I’m grieving part of our relationship that I loved.

He misses traveling, too, but “quit the job you love and find something less fulfilling so that I we can travel more” is a hell of an ask from a spouse.

What can I do to make peace with the life we lead now instead of the life we used to have?

Thanks,

Grounded

Dear Grounded,

It’s time to pull out a calendar and plan two trips. Vacations are like student film shoots, weddings, family reunions, moving house, and asking people on dates in this way: All agreements to participate, no matter how enthusiastic, are conditional until there are specific dates attached. Asking people if they want to do a thing in theory is not the same as telling them when you’re doing the thing and inviting them to join you at a specific time and place. If you start with a time you know works for you, you can negotiate as you go, but the longer you wait to find the magical perfect time when everything and everyone is available, the more you increase the risk that no one and nothing will be available.

The first trip is a joint vacation. If two-week blocks are hard to come by, then what’s a destination that makes sense for a week away within the next year? If your husband can’t go now, and he can’t go soon, then when *precisely* can he go? He’s been there long enough to know when the busy periods are and have a sense of how to budget his leave time, and the further in advance he books his vacations the more time his employer will have to plan. If he lets his job decide when he’s even allowed to ask for time off, he’ll never go, and if you wait for him to wait for them, you’ll never go. Plan it now.

The second trip is a solo journey or one you can take with a good friend or family member. You have a flexible job and a strong desire to travel. You have information that your husband’s schedule and priorities don’t allow him to accompany you like he did before, and you have information that if you wait until he is free, you’ll never go anywhere. What do you want to do with that information? You identify it as “a poisonous thought” that you’re trying to talk yourself out of, but why? Your husband may be your favorite traveling companion, but where is it written that he must be your only one for the rest of time? The subject of your email was:”How much resentment is too much resentment in a marriage?” Meaning, you already resent him. While the ideal amount of resentment in a marriage is probably close to zero, if there’s no way for everyone to get everything they want, why should the status quo mean it’s you who loses out every time? Would he resent you for going without him? If yes, is that better or worse than whatever is happening now?

You can’t go everywhere together like you originally planned, and you can’t expect your husband to give up a fulfilling career to roam the world at your side, so what can you do to get more of what you need? Start with two vacations and see how you feel.

Couples, like Dave and Tina, seek out sex therapy because both partners are frustrated with their sexual dynamics. Dave complains about the little sexual connection they have, and Tina fires […]

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