I came home from work one day, still raw from my husband's lunch with a woman he met through classified ads, to find him sitting on the couch, head in hands. He looked up at me in utter misery and my heart stopped. What's wrong, I could barely speak. What happened?
I had to resign my job, he said. I couldn't make sense of this. He had to resign? Was this because of some sex encounter at work? He said he had been having problems at work because he would take on work that was not at his level. It went against his grain to sit in a cubicle and not have any work to do, but the others became angry because they were higher pay grades than him and felt he should not try to do their work. He said his supervisor told him he could resign before they fired him, so he did.
To say I was floored is an understatement. I had never heard of anyone being asked to leave civil service, even in the probation period. Were you surfing porn, I asked? No. Did you hit on one of the women? No. Did they figure out you were creepy? No, no, no. This made no sense to me but that feeling was overtaken by fear we could not pay our bills. Oh my God, this was the first time in our lives when we weren't both working. I panicked. I started making plans about what we could cut in order to get by but my husband reassured me. We had my income and I was earning more than I ever had before. We had both our military retirements and we had no bills but our house payment.
For the next nine months we settled into a routine. I was the breadwinner. My husband bricked in the patio. He did the dishes and cooked the meals. He looked for work and was inconsolable when he didn't get hired. He vacuumed and did laundry. He seemed fairly happy. I had never been the breadwinner before and while I was proud of myself, I was also worried about what would happen if my husband never went back to work.
He seemed peaceful during this time and I realized that I could not track down his activities while he was at home all day and I was at work. We continued to see the counselor and gradually we reached a state of balance. My husband's worse days seemed to be behind him.
I was almost disappointed when he got a job offer as a civilian with the Air Force. He was happy and returned to work and things seemed pretty good. We started remodeling our master bathroom and I decided to return to school to finish my Masters program.
