I lived apart from my husband for 2 years after he got a job in a different state. It was the worst decision we ever made.

• While I stayed in Washington, D.C., my husband took a job seven hours away in South Carolina.

• He wasn’t as flexible with remote work as we had hoped, so he was driving 14 hours to visit me most weekends.

• After living apart for two years I found a job in DC and moved back. We wouldn’t do this again.

Afterwards been looking for a job for monthsMy husband finally got a great offer, even one that included a higher salary and title raise.

The catch was that the role was set in Spartanburg, South Carolina, about seven hours from where we had lived in Washington, DC, for the past decade.

Moving in together was never on the table. I’ve loved living in the city ever since I moved there to go to graduate school. I really couldn’t imagine myself or our non-traditional family with our six rescue pets living anywhere else.

However, my husband needed a job and could not find a suitable job in our area for months. It wasn’t ideal, but we were desperate and he was excited about the company.

So we planned it for him moving to South Carolina While I was staying in DC. We thought that this arrangement would be somewhat temporary anyway.

Although his new position was office-based, we were both confident that a more hybrid arrangement could be worked out once he had established himself.

I’ve always been very independent and outgoing and I thought maybe there could be some space and more chances to miss each other strengthen our marriage. So I told myself: maybe living apart It might be fun for a while. I was wrong.

Our plans quickly fell apart after he moved out

To prepare for my husband’s move, we had decided to buy a one-story house with a large backyard near his job in South Carolina.

It was an old fixer-upper that needed a lot of work, but the mortgage payment was cheaper than the rentals we were looking at. Also, since I work mostly remotely, we figured I could easily bring the dogs with me to stay there and hire a cat sitter in DC when I came to visit.

But just a few months after he moved in, our plans began to fall through. To begin with, we were overly optimistic about his work schedule: His new company was strongly against remote work, so we only saw each other on weekends and holidays.

Visiting him was not as possible as we expected. It was too expensive for me to fly and pay to board our three dogs as we drove our shared car to South Carolina.

Instead, my husband would drive overnight to DC almost every Friday and drive back to Spartanburg every Sunday afternoon.

The 14-hour round trips were taking a toll on him, so we sometimes skipped weekend visits to give him a break from the road.

When I returned to DC, I was struggling too. Completing normal tasks like grocery shopping and vet appointments without a car was much more complicated than I expected. It didn’t help that I had a ruptured disc in my back, so I can walk walkable city It became increasingly difficult until it was almost impossible.

Working from home, I became lonely and spent most evenings alone on the couch. Our oldest dog was very attached to his father, and when his father was away he began to behave badly, so I couldn’t leave him alone for long periods of time.

Considering all the money I was now spending on food and drinks, my husband’s high salary was no longer making much of a difference in our lifestyle either. grocery delivery and carpools, plus our additional mortgage and increased renovation budget.

After two difficult years, he found a job in DC and returned.

After about a year of this adjustment, I reached my breaking point.

A week before my spine surgery was scheduled, a pipe in our apartment burst and we needed completely new floors. Before going to the hospital, I scrambled to file an insurance claim, plan for water reduction, test flooring samples, and meet with movers to pick up all of our belongings.

There was only so much my husband could do remotely, and this felt like the final straw: I was physically and emotionally overwhelmed.

Throughout my recovery, my friends took care of me during the week until I returned home every Friday evening. I got through it, but it would be another nine months before he finally found a job in D.C. and returned home.

Afterwards living in different states For almost two years I was excited to be a normal couple again, but when he came back I realized the final blow: I had forgotten how to live with someone else.

Ours it felt like home Mine he was at home and felt like just a visitor there. I had found new systems that I could manage on my own and I liked doing things my own way; How has he adapted to this now?

Over time and some difficult conversations, we eventually worked out the kinks and got back into our familiar rhythm. Soon life started to feel more normal like before.

It’s been a year since he moved back to DC with me (and the fixer upper we had in South Carolina is also under new ownership).

Looking back, we both agreed that living seven hours apart was the worst decision we could have made, and we vowed to never do it again, no matter what.

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