The Reluctant Husband: Part 1, Catch-22

I am the reluctant husband. Or I should say, I was the reluctant husband.

The conversation about travel began early in our relationship. About six months in, over a casual and seemingly non-descript dinner at Red Robin, she asked me if I'd be willing to relocate for her to go to grad school. I was immediately terrified of the thought. But in an attempt to be a good boyfriend I thought I would play it smart and sound supportive by saying, "If the opportunity was right, I would consider it.” Apparently my measured attempt at the right response was not at all what I was supposed to say. In her fantasy, I would say, “Of course, my love! I will follow you wherever you go and no matter what we’ll be free and happy and nothing else matters as long as we have each other. Also there will be Oreos, triple rainbows and parades, because love.” She didn’t know me very well back then.

Triple Rainbow, because love

From that point on, travel was always a contentious conversation between us. A lifestyle of traveling the world, assimilating into new cultures, meeting people and making friends in foreign countries, and raising our children with a worldly perspective was what Crystal had always dreamed about. For me, everything I needed and loved was in Seattle. I'm very close with my family and friends and I’d always dreamed they would be close by and we’d all grow old together in our home town. It was so hard for us to talk about because we had conflicting desires at such a fundamental level. How could we honor each other's life dreams without dismissing our own? We couldn't. Any time the conversation came up we were both pitting our own dreams against each other's. Talk about a catch-22.

And now here I am, writing a blog post on our travel blog. This trip is probably not how either of us imagined or dreamed things would pan out prior to that fateful conversation three years ago. But three years gives a couple ten thousand opportunities to understand what’s really going on inside each other’s heads and hearts. By now our fantasies have integrated. I know that we have to see the world together, because love. And she knows that we have to remain connected to home, because love.

-Justin