The Neverending Commute

In every marriage, there are sacrifices. And in marriages where both partners work, there are often geographical sacrifices.

I've made sacrifices. When I was getting ready to apply for residency, my husband got into a graduate school far away from my family and friends, in a fairly competitive location. Because of this, I had no choice but to apply to internal medicine residencies to maximize my chances of matching and getting to live with him, which was the most important thing to me. When I was in med school, I loved neurology and PM&R, but there were only 6 PM&R spots in the entire area and 8 neurology spots (4 of which were at a "malignant" program). And prelim spots were impossible to come by. So I made a sacrifice and applied for medicine instead.

Amazingly, it all worked out okay in the end though.

Then when we were job hunting, I chose the general quadrant of the country where I wanted to live, and my husband job hunted first. Once he found a job, I looked within the same city for mine. It limited my choices, but I found something.

Now his sacrifices:

I hate to drive and I suck at it. I have been in four car accidents, one of which was a serious one requiring a hospitalization, so while I'm willing to have a long public transportation commute, I don't want a long drive. My husband's job is 30 miles away from mine in the Middle of NoWhere (MONW). My job is a bit in the middle of nowhere, but less so in that there is public transportation here, which allows easy access for us to get into the city and for visitors (such as our parents, who don't have cars) to visit us. So we live in the city where I work, and in exchange, I chauffeur our daughter to and from her daycare (also in the same city).

This has become a source of guilt for me though. Usually his commute is 45 minutes to an hour. But on bad days, especially now that the weather has taken a turn for the worse, his commute home has gone up from an hour to an hour and a half.... and it has twice taken him TWO HOURS to get home.

When he gets home from such a long drive, he is not a happy camper. He generally just wants to lie down and not talk to anyone, and usually says a few four letter words about the highway. And of course, I feel totally responsible and very guilty. I did look for a job near his work, but the economy sucks. It's amazing that I found a job that I like in the same general area and that pays well (more than his).

All this is further complicated by the fact that he is considering going back to school on his company's dime. All the grad schools are closer to where I work, but that won't happen for a year and a half at soonest.

I don't know what to do. I constantly feel guilty about this. I've scoured google maps but any place we moved that would shave ten minutes off his commute would add thirty minutes to mine. It doesn't make sense, especially since my days are longer than his and it takes me at least 30-40 minutes to do the childcare stuff in the morning.

Sometimes I feel like the only solution is to quit and stay home.