My Husband Problem That Might Not Get Your Sympathy

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As husband problems go, this is not one likely elicit much sympathy.

I get that.

So, you know the kind of man who loves to travel, see the world, whisk his wife away on romantic adventures across the globe?

Yeah, I got one of those.

“And the problem is—-?” you ask.

The problem is, as long as you asked, I like to stay home.

Home as in with my kids, my pets, my crazy neighbors, fuzzy socks, my routine.

I spent much of a 20+ news career with a packed suitcase ready to fly out the door.

Which was great.

These days, I rarely get an traveling itch thinking, “Gee, wish I was there instead of here.”

Meanwhile, together, Husband and I have been to South America, Asia, Europe, and Dominican Republic together, just to name a few hot spots.

Nothing makes his heart go aflutter more than taking off for a foreign land.

See, Husband has this rather nerdy hobby of collecting frequent flyer miles by the way we spend our money. Your eyes would cross to see his formula of credit cards, online shopping portals, and following other crazies who write blogs and Twitter feeds about such topics.

“Got us two first-class tickets to Italy,” he announced recently as pleased with himself as he had slain a dragon.

“How much did you pay?” I asked knowing this is his favorite question.

“Well, they should’ve cost about $20,000,” he started off.

“And?”

“And I paid $140 for both!” he exclaimed. Make sure you insert giggling like a schoolgirl when you try to imagine him saying this.

And so off we went to the land of romance, pasta, and fresh tomatoes.

“How are you doing?” my sister texted me as Husband and we changed planes.

“I think, I’m turning into more of a homebody as I get older,” I confessed.

“Please,” she corrected. “You were a homebody when you eight.”

Ah, yes, the vivid memory of Montecito Sequoia Girls Camp.

So homesick I could barely breathe.

True story—I wrote a letter home to my parents using felt tip ink and held the paper under my chin so that my tears could splash the page and make the ink run.

You laugh, but hey, it worked. My parents came and got me.  To this day, they’re convinced that something awful must have happened at that camp.

Nothing did.

Except, I wanted to come home.

Flash forward all these decades later. There was no calling my Mommy as I flew over the Atlantic with the man I love.

Enjoying Rome and the Amalfi Coast was pretty darn easy.

Once my husband gets me out there, he and I are well-matched travel companions in what we want to do, see, eat and spend.

Husband, sensing my delight with the trip, thinking just maybe he had converted me from stayer to goer, took my hand, smiled and asked, “So where do you want to go next?”

I could see he was hoping for “Ireland! Morocco! Cape Town!”

It broke my heart to have to break his.

“Home.”  “I want to go home.”

The day after our return Husband says, “Y’know, I’m happy to be home, too.”

A small white lie on his part?

Perhaps.

But a man who loves to see me happy? That’s someone I’ll follow to the ends of the Earth.

What about you, Dear Reader? Are you a stayer married to a goer? A goer in love with a stayer? How do make the balance work?

Please catch my newspaper column each week in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the Dayton Daily News and other newspapers across Ohio.

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