New Reading Material

So after a bad weekend (one where I just want to say "to hell with it all" and go home to Hubby), I started trying to find a good book that could maybe shed some insight to our living situation. There are books about being newlyweds and learning to co-habitate and all that which sounds nice but doesn't help us right now, but then I found a book called "The Commuter Marriage" by Tina B. Tessina.

I overnighted it from Amazon.

It's good, not always relevant, but fairly insightful so far. It mostly comes from the viewpoint of having been married for some time before separating (and also has parts about parenting which I skip over), but overall it's been a good read. I have discovered that Hubby and I have even more to be thankful for that we realize. The book starts by talking about the different types of long-distance relationships, and ours is lucky in that our time apart is scheduled and set. We can plan our times together and build a routine. I go home in between cities (which is two days) and his work usually lets him off so we are together the whole time. The book does mention that the more the person travels and the longer the trips are, the more the stress can be... hmm.

Also, this is completely voluntary. I don't have to do this. We both agreed that this is an amazing, incredible job for me. And I can't think of any job I'd rather have. I love this show, I love dancing this show, I love teaching this show. My professional life is a dream job that others would absolutely kill to have. It just pulls my life away from my Hubby. Big Debbie-downer. But there are many couples out there who have no choice but to be apart. We are in control of this.

One thing that has been troubling me about life on the road is how my life here is completely separate from his. I have been feeling guilty that my day to day life is foreign to him. I have my tour life and routines and people I see and interact with, and he's not a part of that. We try as hard as we can to catch each other up on our daily activities but in reality it's completely separate from him. For instance, we've had a handful of new people at work whom he hasn't met. These people are in my life, all day every day, and they have only heard about him and vice versa. It's weird for two large components of my life not to overlap.

I was reading today that it's healthy to create separate lives. While we are apart it's good to live our lives and have new friends and such. I understand that, but now my fear has been that I have this routine that I've had for a year now which doesn't involve my partner... how much harder is it now going to be to include each other in our daily mundane decisions once we live together? Even grocery shopping... I know what I like to buy is not what he's going to want (I LOVE Vanilla Silk and he can't stand soymilk... but now I'm used to getting it). So are we not only making or lives harder now but making it harder in the future too?

Please feel free to leave comments or insight or helpful hints for navigating this time of our life!