Finally a trophy wife

Over the chapters of my life that I refer to as “my career,” I enjoyed a long history of Making the Money in my relationships. Except for periods of unemployment — by choice and by economic mishap — I made more income than any partner or spouse. Until recently!

With those higher-income jobs came higher levels of stress and responsibility, as well as far more work travel than I wanted. After I learned very early on in “my career" that work travel was less glamorous and exotic than it was billed to be, my enthusiasm for such travel waned deeply and vigorously. Perhaps some folks out there in the Ether had fun coworkers or went nifty places that lured tourists. I did not. I had tea-totaling coworkers overly enthused with their bible apps or went to destinations like Greenville, SC. (Nothing against Greenville, SC, it just wasn’t a place I longed to visit, especially not for 15-hour workdays with non-imbibing religionists who were super prudish about profanity. #notmyjam)

On rare occasion, I got to take a spouse with me on some work trips. I would depart the hotel room to go to my workday — usually with dread because I never cared much for my jobs or my employers, but I very much cared about the paycheck — and leave my companion ensconced in the room, with no real plans or demands on their day. And I would be pea-green with envy.

Things have changed.

I left my corporate America job in October 2021, with no intention of finding more work for the foreseeable future. We had relocated halfway across the United States just as the pandemic was beginning, to be closer to friends and family and lower our costs of living so that we could live on my husband’s salary and let me get away from the corporate rat race and deranging political BS, and recover.

All those decades of  corporating™️ (definition below) had pushed me beyond the outer edges of burnout and fully into depression. In 2019, I had planned to end everything, a tidy missive-by-suicide that involved a handgun, parking in a work parking lot on the weekend, and leaving it all to be found by company reps. (It all felt — and still feels — fitting: let them clean up the mess they caused.) Instead, I started an antidepressant and elected to have shoulder surgery and (another first) used FMLA to cover my 3-1/2 month leave of absence.

So by this time — February 2023 — I am well into my self-determined and funded sabbatical, and able to travel with my husband to his corporate America job. His team is based out of Raleigh, NC, so for the cost of my plane ticket, I got to finally be the hotel-ensconced spouse and not the slogging-to-work spouse. I took pretty clothes for dinners out with him and his coworkers; I took books to read and a laptop for journaling and blogging — not work! These were the markers of Trophy Spouse in my world, and by the gods, I finally wrested them from the universe.

I even got to take some photos that were meant for more than expense reimbursement. #winning

=======

GLOSSARY:

Corporating: the societally-encouraged and condoned exploitation of employees via modernized indentured servitude; common features include:

• unpaid overtime (especially when unplanned);
• always-on access via email and always-\urgent project assignments;
• gaslighting and ghosting in response to voiced concerns or questioning strategy; and
• enforced identification with and consumption of branding or marketing “corporate cool-aid™️” in order to brainwash recipients into a venerated corporate culture.