I saved my marriage by separating from my husband part-time

At the end of a writers' retreat, I surprised myself by telling someone I would be their roommate — in a different state to my husband

I already started practising social distancing long before the pandemic (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

As Covid-19 sweeps the globe, many people are suffering stir-craziness in quarantine or self-isolation. Though the virus is something I take quite seriously, my mind is mostly calm because I began practicing the pleasures of social distancing last summer, when I relocated to New York City and my husband of a decade became my part-time, long-distance partner.

I had let my creativity languish in suburban Northern Virginia, sleepwalking through a routine that lacked the focused solitude I needed to feel fulfilled and write creatively. I worked a hyper-social day job, wrangling more than six dozen five- to 11-year-olds as director of a before-and-after-school program. I made daily vows to myself about carving out time to write in the evenings, but I’d end up marooned on the couch with my husband, too exhausted to share anything more than a bottle of wine and my opinions on who should be booted from The Bachelor. I wanted more for myself and my marriage, but I couldn’t find the space I needed to indulge my creative and romantic impulses.

Then I landed a residency at an artist community in upstate New York, where I lived in blissful solitude for a month, with a cavernous writing studio and a separate bedroom all to myself. My creativity expanded to fill the vast amounts of empty time and space allotted me in that artistic haven; I wrote at all hours, began a yoga practice, and jogged winding trails to meditate on my characters’ next moves.

I often passed full days in total silence, writing into social voids with mindfulness, bringing to my work a level of clarity and nuance that had been lacking in the projects I’d eked out in small scraps of time salvaged amidst the social pressures of my day job and my increasing inability to nurture my marriage. Five other artists lived on the property, but I spent much less time in close proximity to them than I had spent socializing back home, and when I did see them we discussed our work then hurried back to hole up in our socially distant spaces where our only job was to transform our ideas into books, plays, musical scores, and paintings.

When the four weeks of artistic isolation ended, I was surprised to hear myself tell the resident composer that I could fill her vacant roommate slot in Manhattan. The one big kink in my relocation plan was my marriage, which I wasn’t willing to leave behind despite my need for some serious me-time. During my stint in the wilds of upstate, I had missed my husband with a hot passion that stoked our sex life in whole new ways; I was certain we could not only survive more time apart, but that it was essential to our happiness.

My husband wasn’t ready to leave his job in Virginia and I had always wanted to ply my craft in the US literary epicenter, so we collaborated on a plan that allowed us to stay together in two spaces: he would work in Virginia four days a week and live with me in New York City the other three. We were scared, of course, but excitement trumped terror.

Sex and relationship therapist Dr Jenni Skyler says that distance in marriages can create space for mutual yearning. “Time apart for many couples can help attraction because absence makes the heart grow fonder. We don’t see and live with all the day-to-day frustration and idiosyncrasies,” Skyler said, while also noting separation isn’t for everyone: “Some people with abandonment wounds may create an emotional barrier when apart to protect their yearning heart. For those people, where yearning is actually painful, absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder, but rather further.”

My husband and I definitely fit into Skyler’s first group. After the move, I wrote my fingers raw, tripled my daily jogging mileage, and spent many focused hours meditating. When my husband slept over, our shared joy was outsized in the bedroom and beyond. The aphrodisiac of distance made us hotter than two trysting teens and I started getting more articles published, while also making serious headway on a short story collection and a memoir. I missed my husband deeply when he was several states away for half the week, so much so that when he was with me I felt giddy for having him close.

It’s hard to know when life will go back to normal given the horrifying spread of coronavirus. The best slice of solace I have during these crazy, unpredictable times is the predictability of my writing routine and the joy I’ve found in practiced solitude. My husband wrapped up his job in Virginia in recent weeks and now we’re together full-time, but we’ve learned the value of cordoning off areas of our lives for solo pursuits and isolating for the love of more quality time when we’re together.