Karma Cleanser - Commute my sentence
Karma Cleanser: Will it come back to bite you?
Dear Karma Cleanser:
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Everybody else seems to be complaining about their cars and long drive times, so here is one more for you to mull over.
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I’ve been married to my husband for almost 18 months, and we dated for a year prior. During that time he’s earned two prestigious promotions at work. I’m very happy for him and his career. What I’m not happy about is all the travel that he has to now do for his job.
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He now travels almost two weeks out of every month. I don’t have a problem with the time to myself – I have a lot of friends and two 3-year-old nieces who live close by to keep me busy. But I do mind driving him to the airport. His flights almost always depart around 6 a.m., and he naturally expects me to drive him to the airport. By the time I take him there, I always get stuck in the morning rush hour coming home. It can take me more than an hour to get back to our house.
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I guess my question then is: How can I be a good wife and also say to my husband that I can’t endure the morning rush hour any longer? He makes a lot more money than I do, so I know he’s going to say that I’m not “sharing the load” if I ask him to take a cab or find another means to travel to the airport. I also know that his company would pay for his cab fare.
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He says he likes the time when we are in the car together, even though he usually spends most of the ride reading the newspaper or sending e-mails on his Blackberry. I do love him, but I’d rather be sleeping in. Is that terrible to say?
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On a recent trip out of town, I lied and said I wasn’t feeling well just to avoid having to drive him to the airport. I now regret lying, but I couldn’t stomach another morning sitting in traffic. Am I going to hell or what?
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Yours is a question of convenience. You seem to only relish this relationship when it’s convenient to you: When he’s around, it’s fine. When he’s not around, it’s also fine – so long as you can both keep cashing his hefty paychecks. Once things become inconvenient, you whine. True, sitting in stop-and-go traffic in the wee hours of dawn can indeed be a soul-deadening exercise, and your husband should acknowledge the sacrifice you make by at least talking to you on the ride out of town. Perhaps your spouse could also reciprocate by planning his travel at times when traffic is less onerous, or agree to take public transit one trip out of every three. But for the sake of your couplehood karma, it sounds like you should cool your jets and start to appreciate the time you do have together, even if it’s a few stolen minutes in the car.
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Been bad? karmacleanser@gmail.com