Member-only story
The House That Was Supposed to Save Our Marriage
We had a tendency to outgrow things.
Nineteen years ago I moved in with my first husband. It was partly out of necessity. I had just quit teaching without any inkling of an idea what I wanted to be when I grew up.
My sister had gotten engaged and moved out of our apartment a few months earlier. My parents had been kind enough to subsidize her half of the place until the lease ended. I had nowhere to go. So, after six months of dating, I moved in with my boyfriend.
His house was just 1,000 sq. ft. and in need of renovation. The carpet was so old that you couldn’t vacuum it and be able to breathe afterward. The dishwasher rolled out from the laundry room and the huge back yard was mostly dirt. The bathroom was so small that if you wanted to change your mind, you had to step out into the hallway. We lasted a year in that house together.
Our first house we bought as a couple was 1,655 square feet and was to be the foundation where we’d grow our life. It was where we got married, where we had our daughter and where things started to fall apart a little.
