From sea to shining sea
Living life differently than the expectations you’ve slowly settled down into over the years sometimes makes the best sense, but often feels like swimming against the current. If that’s where life takes you and what you are called to do, though, then there’s no helping it: you just hunker down and do it. What a pleasant surprise it is, then, to find that you are not alone, that there are others who are making similar unobtrusive choices and have paved the way before you. Many an obscure bend in the road turns out to be well traveled: coming out, bike commuting, …. or a dual-residence relationship.
Knox and I are currently doing the bi-coastal thing. He’s working mostly in Seattle at the moment, and I am in Boston. We can each advance our careers and enjoy the non-couple parts of our lives, and we get to travel between two fascinating cities (or meet somewhere in between). At the same time, we juggle how best to optimize our time together: holidays, vacations, and the minutiae of everyday life.
It turns out that we are certainly not alone in these choices. The New York Times alone had two articles on the topic this week: one on “living alone together” and one on couples who maintain two regular homes because of work. The local boookstore carries The Long-Distance Relationship Guide. And our friend Pam has a trans-Atlantic marriage that has her summering in Seattle and wintering in Austria.
So far, we’re handling things well and the experience is proving instructive. Knox is getting ready to leave for Seattle in a few days, and I am looking forward to visiting him there in early June. He’s met my friends here and explored the area; now it will be my turn to get to know his friends better and get acquainted with the much-vaunted Pacific Northwest.
Right now, though, we’re enjoying a lazy morning reading the paper at a local cafe before walking, biking, and dining in one of our cities.
May 7th, 2006 at 1:02 pm
Thanks Victor, this is sweet. We’re both in Seattle right now, which is novel - we’ll be together until the end of July. Then I have about a month of being solo until winging it over the Atlantic again. It takes a LOT of practice, I tell you what.
This winter I spent some time with another friend who lives binationaly - we read an article in some women’s mag about LDRs and we laughed and laughed and laughed. “Three hours?! Those people are AMATUERS!”
P.