Being a Wife and Mother is a Woman’s Highest Calling

It comes with a side of economic vulnerability

We are now husband and wife. The first six years of our marriage felt magical. (Though I now question the accuracy of my perceptions of that time.)

During those years, we both graduated from school, an LPN nursing program for me, a BS in Business for him. We decided it was high time to add the pitter patter of little feet to our lives. Especially since we didn’t want to be receiving AARP membership offers with a kindergartner at home.

It was now or never; we decided. It didn’t take long for the stork to show up.

Our little man arrived on a hot August afternoon. I was now home full-time while my husband was in his final year of school. Preparing for the CPA exam, while maintaining his on-campus job, was no easy thing.

I was facing my own challenges as a new mom, as our little man was quite colicky the first several months. But eventually our family got into the new rhythm. We delighted in every developmental milestone, especially his smiles and belly laughs.

Challenging, yes. Happy, oh hell yes. We had each other and were excited about the next step.

Degree in hand, the job search began. He would be the main breadwinner because, well, doh, it’s God’s order for the family. But there were also some uncomfortable stirrings, too.

We began questioning the tenets of our faith and felt an increasing disconnect with organized religion. But we would squelch what felt like heretical feelings. On an intuitive level, we knew if we starting tugging at the loose thread, the entire sweater would unravel.

Over the course of the next few years, we added a baby girl and another boy. We felt like an official family now. We delighted in our littles and marveled at how unique each one of them was. Having three in under four years redefined our meaning of the word “exhausted.”

We also felt the growing pressure of finances as we insisted upon bucking the “it takes two incomes to raise a family” school of thought. (I would eventually learn this was a short-sighted belief but rather economic reality.) Living frugally became my challenge as I figured out how to stretch the family budget. He worked long demanding hours as a CPA, especially during tax season.

But a new dynamic started unfolding. He was struggling at work and wanted something different. And we were outgrowing the mobile home we purchased.

Enter the stress of new jobs and moves. Like every 2–3 years. I just cringe typing this. It was like a frenetic dance. For him, trying to find a job in which he could thrive while I worked at feathering yet another new nest, while tending to the kids. When they were school age, we committed to homeschooling, a task that fell to me.

Our lives were like a rapidly changing kaleidoscope. Cha-cha-changes. Always changes. New homes. New jobs. Amid all this was flipping a few houses. As a one-income family, the flips got us debt-free, something we could never do with a single paycheck.

Looking back now, I didn’t see the red flags gathering on the horizon. Perhaps I was too preoccupied with packing up yet another home. Slowly and then suddenly, as they say.

By the time our two oldest left our home, we had moved. Again. I had quit counting how many times we had moved and I was ashamed of how our lives looked when compared to our stable friends. They maintained steady jobs and stayed place in one home while we were off hunting unicorns, looking for just the right place and job.

My heart grew increasingly heavy for him as well. It was clear early on he didn’t enjoy accounting, but dammit, he paid the price to get CPA after his name. So, accounting jobs it would be. Even when he would longingly look out the window from his high-rise corporate office to see Mexican crews doing landscaping work.

Meanwhile, we watched our friends launch their newly fledged kids with stable footing. This was made possible by the mom returning to work when the kids were older. I could only dream of helping our kids with college expenses. I felt like the shit mother-of-the-year.

But for us, we continued to slog along on one income with occasional contributions from me. I started doing professional organizing as well as freelance writing. It was becoming clear to me: Like my husband; I too struggled with consistency.

It was staring us in the face and growing. But we couldn’t see it. Undiagnosed ADHD. Depression and anxiety. And for me, fibromyalgia that had me in constant pain. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Now, we are in yet another city, the city I would eventually pronounce as being the place my marriage came to die. We had moved there when a job offer materialized from the ethers. It even seemed providential.

He was canned 2 months later. I was terrified, but tried to keep a game face when he hung out the shingle for his own practice.

You know that saying that insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results? Yeah. That was us. We were nuts. Our previous attempts at an accounting practice ended in flames. Only now, the stakes were higher. “I hope it works out” is not a good business plan.

Not only were we no longer home owners, we burned through savings and started incurring debt once again. Even though we were broke most of the time over our years together, we had been debt-free.

But now the financial and relational strain was becoming clearer as our 30th wedding anniversary approached.

We used to joke that we weren’t opposites; we were complementary. But we weren’t laughing anymore. Working together to build his accounting practice only illustrated our wildly different approaches to running a business. I had always handled our budget and checkbook, and now the inconsistency of income was triggering literal panic attacks. I would do a balance inquiry before any grocery trip to make sure there was enough money in the account to meet our most basic of needs.

The financial strain grew. And our marriage was in deep doo-doo. The strain between us was growing as fast as our finances were declining. I was working, but the job was extremely stressful. This was after bouncing around at other jobs for short periods of time. (ADHD much?)

Big surprise, he was deeply unhappy with his work as well. Oh yeah. The landlord informed us the rent was going up but… Would we be interested in buying the house? I laughed bitterly to myself. If only the landlord knew how pathetic our situation was.

The gulf between us grew. And it was against this miserable backdrop that the stage was set for the next chapter in our story.

The emotional affair…

See you at next article!

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