Your assumption is correct: I was basically a homemaker my entire marriage.

I lived in the same house from age 3 until I got married. Moving to a new place the first time was a big shock for me. Unfortunately, my husband was not at all helpful or supportive even though he had moved around quite a lot as a kid. We got married, then he joined the army and after he got out of basic training, we moved about 900 miles away to a new place. So this was really the first time either of us had been away from our parents. He promptly began behaving like a lot of first-year college students who are away from their parents for the first time: He was self-indulgent, selfish and irresponsible. Then I turned up pregnant shortly after we got there. I was very sick with my first pregnancy. And we had serious financial problems, in part because we bought an expensive vehicle while he was in basic training with the idea that we would both have jobs and no kids for a few years. This was a big, big mistake that dogged us the rest of our marriage. We had chronic financial problems that we never did resolve, in part due to that initial decision and in part because he really didn't learn from that mistake and in some sense repeated it (over my objections) with our second vehicle (while convincing himself we were on the same page because I eventually threw my hands up and stopped fighting with him over it).

I liked getting to see the world on terms that made sense for me. I am unable to wrap my brain around why people go on "vacations" (short visits somewhere to do something I find utterly meaningless like lay on the beach) but I really liked living in different places for a couple of years or so at a time, in part because you get to know the area in a way that you can't possibly learn in just a week or two -- the local customs, pronunciations, differences in so many things like shopping and food and climate and why the architecture is so different. Nonetheless, we would start our "to-do-and-see" list as soon as we knew where we were going and we lived like perpetual tourists. (Many military families don't start doing the tourist-y stuff until they have orders to leave and suddenly realize they might not ever see the place again.) We pretty much used every long weekend or other time off to go sight-seeing at local stuff (until my health crisis put a stop to that). Regardless of how far down the list we got, we were usually pretty content with how much we had done by the time we left again. My kids saw so many zoos, aquariums, etc that when we took them to an aquarium in San Francisco, they were quick to announce it was "lame" and "boring" and ask "can we go yet??" This in spite of our chronic financial problems and basically living on one income the entire time.

One really good thing: I had real privacy in my marriage and my kids found stereotypical ugly in-law jokes baffling. They just couldn't relate because we didn't live near any of our relatives. Having real privacy was a tremendous help to a chronically troubled marriage. It is part of why the marriage lasted as long as it did and part of why the divorce was extremely amicable. I have relatives who had attempts on their lives while divorcing so my amicable divorce is quite the novelty for my extended family. One relative, who was nearly killed during their divorce, told me bluntly that I was a fool to trust my ex to the degree that I did. So there is no doubt in my mind that had we not been far away from relatives and had we not had real privacy for our marriage, things would have been much, much, much uglier, both during the marriage and during the divorce.

My first conversation with my ex husband when we were 16 years old was an argument. We never did stop arguing, even though years later he admitted to me he picked that first argument as a means to talk to a pretty girl. He was very bad about not being able to let go of an argument and would follow me around and harangue me, while I tried to walk away and give us both a cooling off period. At some point during the divorce I finally said in exasperation "The only time I have your undivided attention is the one time I desperately wish you would go back to ignoring me like you usually do." After that he was finally able to just walk away. The fact that the only time he really gave me his attention was while arguing with me was extremely corrosive to the marriage. Over time, there just stopped being any positive experiences in the marriage. When we would agree to set aside time for each other, he always felt compelled to fill that time with household chores and errands. So he still was unable to actually pay attention to me, even during times that we had agreed to block out as "together time". We also couldn't get on the same page financially and he was extraordinarily poor at making me feel loved. (I have at times said that I got pretty much everything I wanted out of my marriage except a feeling of being loved.) These problems would have destroyed the marriage no matter where we lived. The fact that I got to go to new and interesting places was one of the good things about the marriage, not one of the bad things.

When he got orders for Southern California, he tried desperately to get out of it. He told me "There is nothing there. You will divorce me." I eventually told him to stop fighting it and just accept the assignment, that it would be fine. It turned out to be one of the most cherished places we lived, for all four of us. He even tried to extend his assignment so we could stay longer. That request was not granted.

Just be a good husband. You can do that any place. And being a bad husband will ruin your marriage no matter where you live.

Peace and good luck.