Up to Speed

The Trailing Wives Club

First there was Kristin, the engineer. She toiled in misery as a bank teller for over a year before finally breaking back into her field - as a poorly paid intern.

Kathy left a job she loved at a consulting firm. She was overqualified for every position she applied for, but was never even granted an interview. She’s trying to embrace a new life as a homemaker and stay at home mom, but any time Kathy talks about her old job, she cries.

These ladies and I are part of a class of displaced people known as trailing spouses, working professionals who move for the sake of our partner’s career and then face setbacks or stagnation in our own careers because of it. This scenario is extremely common in my region. If a college-educated couple moves to the Upper Peninsula because one of them landed a great job, chances are good their spouse will be unemployed or underemployed.

Now that women are blazing new career trails, men are joining our ranks. Gary relocated when his wife was promoted to a high-profile position in healthcare. After two years of dead end job searches he has resigned himself to staying at home.

Gary’s wife cheerfully told me he has adjusted to being a house-husband. She’s grateful he’s there to cook and take care of the house while she fights her way up the career ladder. I smiled politely, but thought, ‘Gary’s okay with this? Yeah, right.’  I know firsthand the frustrations of making do while your significant other is busy making progress. Poor Gary’s got the cultural norms of man-as-breadwinner to contend with besides.

My own story isn’t exactly a tragedy, but I wouldn’t classify it as a success story either. We moved to Upper Michigan from Minneapolis in 2003 when my husband, Eric, got a job with the US Forest Service. I searched for a teaching job for a year and a half but never even found an opening to apply for. I worked as a substitute teacher for half the money I made doing the same job in the Twin Cities. I wasn’t alone, either. One intelligent woman with a teaching degree had been stuck in low-wage support positions for more than a decade.

Through a series of fortunate events I stumbled into an entry level position with a local advertising agency. I enjoy the work and my colleagues are like family, but 4 years later I’m ready to move up to new challenges, and a higher salary. Unfortunately job openings are still few and far between and there’s tough competition for the positions that do open up.

My frustrations with this small, blue collar town are mounting as the few doors that open seem to get slammed in my face. I’ve been interviewed and come in “second place” multiple times. Whispered accounts of unspoken “hire locals first” policies poison my thoughts further, leaving me cynical and angry. My poor husband endures constant tearful petitions to move somewhere with more opportunities and a fair playing field for outsiders.

At first Eric resisted my complaints and chalked them up to a bad attitude.  Then one day he softened and showed a new willingness to negotiate. It seems he had conversations with two other guys at the office whose wives were also bugging them to relocate. These ladies were fed up with lousy job prospects, too.

Knowing your circumstances are not unique is helpful, I think. It allows you to step back and examine your situation as evidence of a larger cultural trend, rather than a problem particular to your own life and marriage.

Should I stay or should I go?

I’ve been slowly digesting Richard Florida’s “Who’s Your City: How the Creative Economy is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life“ for several weeks now. I’m not sure whether reading this book should be classified as self-improvement or self-torture for a trailing spouse like me.

Here’s my loose interpretation of Florida’s premise. All the smart, creative, entrepreneurial people in the world are clustering together in hipster mega-regions full of gays, artists, and Internet billionaires. Those of us who live elsewhere will be left in the dark ages. Culturally and financially impoverished. Largely irrelevant.

I like to think of myself as part of the creative class that will drive the new economy, but right now I’m living in one of the places Florida calls, “huge valleys of the spiky world - rural areas and far-flung places that have little concentration of population or economic activity, and little connection to global activity (p. 32). ”  I suspect it’s in these “valleys” that the numbers of trailing spouses like me are reaching epidemic proportions.

This book fuels my current feelings of dissatisfaction and desperation. I live in Michigan, a whirling vortex of economic backsliding with Detroit at the eye of the storm. At times I chastise myself for falling into the “grass is greener” trap and failing to learn the lessons of being in this place, at this time. Other times I regret not trying harder to get the heck out of Dodge.

Instead of fighting against my present location-related obstacles, I could invest my energy into moving somewhere else. Sure it would be hard to uproot friendships and routines after nearly 6 years. Yes, it could be tough to sell our house in this real estate market. But if I were willing to endure this pain and stress in the short term, would I reap far greater benefits 6 months or 6 years from now?

Leaving also means giving up some of the great things about living here. Economic issues aside, Escanaba actually has a lot going for it. The natural beauty of Lake Michigan and the surrounding forests and rivers are inspiring.  It’s a fun place if you like cool temperatures and outdoor sports. Housing prices are very reasonable. My husband and I bought a lovely historic 1915 three bedroom home across from Lake Michigan for $165,000. I shudder to think how little house this amount would buy if we moved to a growing market.

Building a Career, vs. Building a Life

Living here has been difficult career-wise, but gave me a tremendous boost creatively. Escanaba has a thriving arts community. We have a fine arts center, some talented artists, an excellent community theatre, and even an Underground Theatre that performs edgy stuff like “The Vagina Monologues” and “The Pillowman.” This rebel theatre crowd raises the ire of more conservative residents (think Footloose), thus ensuring packed editorial space in the local paper and overflow crowds on opening night.

Three weeks after we arrived I auditioned for “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and landed the lead role. I gave tours at the art center. I was recruited to serve as acting talent and crew for a collection of short films. I landed a marketing job with zero experience and dove into copywriting, graphic design, presentations, and voiceover acting. I joined Toastmasters. I started a book club.

The theatre was full of my kind of people - creative, eccentric types who love to have fun and make art for its own sake. My husband and I found a wonderful group of friends and performed in several shows. Many of my young talented colleagues talk about running off to the big city to pursue fame and fortune. It’s rare that anyone actually leaves, though.

I can’t imagine myself doing all these things if I had stayed in the Twin Cities. That’s the thing about small towns - opportunities to get involved are more accessible. They’re physically easier to get to, and because there isn’t so much competition you can be kind-of-good at something and still participate. Size is not prescriptive in determining whether a community will be an enjoyable place to live or not. Escanaba is a wonderful place to be an artist. A wonderful place to retire. It’s not necessarily a wonderful place to try to build a career or start a business.

Is happiness dependent on location?

The older ladies in my mentoring group from church encourage us to surrender our own desires, accept what God has for us, and embrace where we are. I do think this is wise advice, but in my heart I’m not ready  to wave the white flag. I’m too ambitious (or perhaps selfish) to let go of my desire to find satisfying work and be well-compensated for it. I can’t help but think I would be happier and more successful in a different place. It also concerns me that the church ladies’ own stories always seem to start with a line like, “I spent the first five years living here depressed and miserable…”

My better self does belive true joy is dependent on attitude, not location or circumstance. And I don’t think this advice to surrender is merely a crutch for Christians. Steve Pavlina has a blog post on “Leveling Up” in which he exhorts readers to look for and master the lessons at their current level of experience in order to move up to the next stage of growth. He writes, “You can’t move forward in life by hating where you are…Resistance is powerlessness. Acceptance is power.”

This seems to resonate with the church ladies’ truth, though Pavlina is passionately opposed to organized religion. (He does advocate talking directly to Jesus, however, which is cool.)

Is happiness dependent on place? Perhaps to some degree. But writers like Victor Frankl or Jean-Dominique Bauby show us that we can choose to live full meaningful lives even when imprisoned by Nazis or our own bodies.

No matter where you live, you always have to do the hard work of carving out a life, playing the hand you’re dealt, finding your identity, and building relationships. Whether you’re privileged to have infinite choices or only one, life presents challenges that require us to adapt and adjust. And maybe, like me,  you have to take a deep breath and admit that a career isn’t the only thing that matters.

This trailing spouse is still desperate to get out of town. I feel like George Bailey with his suitcase packed, circumstances conspiring to keep me off the train. There are no definite plans to move on the horizon. But the verdict is still out on whether my survival and growth depends on moving somewhere else, or finding the place where I can be happy within myself.

Tags: Career, happiness, life in small towns, Richard Florida, Trailing Spouses

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 19th, 2009 at 8:10 pm and is filed under Trailing Spouses. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.