Is this the marriage I wanted? It's our life, now....live, love it, or leave it!

by Robin
(Minnesota)

I am 38 years old, I have 3 kids - 13,12 and 15 mos. I'm in graduate school for special education. My husband, Chuck, is 43 - he was a printing press operator for 22 years. The last time he was laid off was IT. Time for a change. He had always worked the night shift (which is strange, anyway), but I told him he should get his CDL. (I don't know what the heck I was thinking!)

We've been married a little under 5 years - we love being together - we have fun together. But my husband is a goer and a doer - he likes to be busy and keep going. Trucking is perfect for him. Is it perfect for US? No! There are a lot of things I absolutely despise about it. He's only been driving for 3 months. He was trying to get a local job, but nobody would hire with less than 6 mos. experience. So, the first company that hired him, he went with...which is okay because it seems to be an okay company, so far. He first had to ride with a mentor for 6 weeks - he was gone, with no home time, for 45 days STRAIGHT. I thought I was going to DIE!! It was totally miserable. I cried all the time - I missed him so much. It was hard, here, to function without thinking about him all the time. I didn't feel like doing much of anything. One day I decided - I'm making this work - for him, because it makes him happy, and for us, because if he's happy our house runs a LOT more smoothly. I've connected with some women, unfortunately they're not close by, who have husbands in this industry and have lived with it much longer than I....they gave me some GREAT advice. I'm much more positive, now, and much more upbeat. He's gone, and we try to talk every day - it's funny because he's lucky to be mostly in the south and has nice weather, and we're up here in snow and cold - so he gives me crap about that. I started a blog for his family to know what's going on his life - they don't really want to talk to me that much, but they like to follow what he's doing, so I update that for him. One of the hardest parts is the kids, I'm not going to lie ...my kids aren't angels, they're not HORRIBLE, but they definitely do not respect (or fear, whichever you prefer) me as much as they do him. So, in his absence, unfortunately the kids treat me somewhat like a doormat - I've learned that I'm their servant and have been put on this earth as such..... (so they think) I never use him as a weapon, I never threaten "when dad gets home"...I'm just trying to weather this the best way I can. He can't do anything about it 2000 miles away! He asks me how it's going and I'm honest but not TOO detailed...he doesn't need that distraction. He already has so many things to think about. I'm a little jealous of his travel, I admit, but when he text messages me pictures...they're not really exciting from the freeway. And he has to sleep in a twin bed in the back of his truck...he spends 24 hours a day with that truck... I would imagine it's sort of like being stuck on an island. He doesn't complain about all of that stuff, though...just about the wait times and missing the kids and me. I think the worst thing is that our marriage is stretched. We don't "feel" each-other in our daily lives as most couples do. He doesn't come home every night for supper and watch tv. This year we'll have different holidays, I'm sure it'll be hard for his family to face the fact that he's not home.
For right now this is our life and I've resigned to making it the best it can be.