I chose my career over my marriage because it brought me more joy
Emily Farris on the conflict between her career and her relationship
Emily Farris is a Kansas City-based writer and author of the essay collection I’ll Just Be Five More Minutes: And Other Tales from My ADHD Brain. She posts sporadically to Instagram @thatemilyfarris and writes an even more sporadic newsletter called
. Her essay is about the choice between her marriage and her career, and how, in the end, she chose her career.You can order Emily’s book from Amazon, Bookshop.org, or wherever books are sold.
And there are only two weeks left to preorder This American Ex-Wife!
“I don’t want to read your newsletter. I want you to tell me what you’re thinking!” my husband of 11 years said in a voice that was somewhere between talking and yelling. “Sometimes I feel like I don’t even know who you really are!”
Well, maybe you don’t know me because you never read anything I write, I thought. But I had the sense not to say out loud.
It was October and we were discussing the increasingly tenuous state of our marriage during one of those long, exhausting conversations that’s not quite a fight but not not a fight, either. Technically speaking, it had been going on since my return from a dreamy writing retreat in Wisconsin two weeks earlier, but if I’m being honest, it’s the same argument we’d been having for nearly a decade. The details were always different but the story structure was disturbingly predictable: I focused too much of my attention on things that were not him, which made him angry, which made me want to avoid him even more, which made him even angrier.
On this particular fall day, he was upset that I hadn’t made time for him before I left town and that when I got home, I went straight into one of my busiest work weeks of the year. In his defense, those are legitimate reasons to be pissed at your partner. In my defense, why would I want to give my very limited time to someone who spent that time complaining that I don’t give him enough time?
I attempted to explain that he wasn’t the only one feeling neglected — that I’d also been neglecting my creative self for years and that when I was up north, I reconnected with her for a few glorious days. And that on the drive home, it occurred to me that if I couldn’t manage to meet my own mental and emotional needs, of course I couldn’t meet his. And… “Well, did you read the newsletter I wrote last week? I did a much better job of explaining it all there.”
That’s when he announced: “I don’t want to read your newsletter. I want you to tell me what you’re thinking!”
What I couldn’t articulate to him at that moment was that my essays are where I can be the most honest and vulnerable version of myself. I’ve done enough therapy to connect the dots between my upbringing in an invalidating environment and my career as a writer of personal narrative. As a kid, I processed my feelings on the page because it was the only place I felt safe doing so. Nobody shut me down before I finished making my case, told me my feelings were wrong, or shamed me for interjecting a little dark humor to lighten the mood here and there.
“I racked my brain for a career milestone (for either of us!) that didn’t also have a painful memory attached to it and I couldn’t come up with anything.”
Why it took me 11 years to figure out I’d recreated that dynamic in my relationship, I do not know. But once I started thinking about it, I couldn’t stop.
I thought about how, since having kids, my attempts to take time and space to write — or even just to be alone in the house to calm my neurodivergent brain — often turned into days-long disputes. I thought about how his work travel was a given while mine felt more like a negotiation since no boss was forcing me out of state to focus on my manuscript and how I always seemed to say or do the wrong thing the second I walked back through the door. I thought about how when I was succeeding in one area of my life, I was failing miserably in another. I thought about the hours and days we wasted arguing about time and attention when we could have been giving each other time and attention. I thought about how our mutual dissatisfaction had intensified with every passing year because no matter what we tried, we lacked the tools to meet the other’s needs. I racked my brain for a career milestone (for either of us!) that didn’t also have a painful memory attached to it and I couldn’t come up with anything.
For years, divorce had felt inevitable — less a matter of if than when — but because I could usually push away the thought by distracting myself with a project or hobby, I hadn’t really considered why. Confronting the reality of my relationship allowed me to see that it had taken on a big, terrible life of its own and it was holding us both against our will. Neither of us was ever going to get what we craved, no matter how hard we fought.
When my thoughts turned to what I wanted for my future, both personally and professionally, my heart sank. At 41, I was certain I wanted the rest of my life to be filled with joy, warmth, novelty, and kindness. I wanted my young sons to know in their bones that our house was a place of love, laughter, safety, and spontaneous kitchen dance parties. I wanted to plant leggy perennials in the yard without starting a weeklong war and I wanted to daydream about a lake house even though I owed the IRS lots of money. I wanted to finish the book proposal I’d abandoned last spring when I decided that selling a second essay collection right after I turned in my first probably wasn’t worth the domestic drama. And as my kids got older, I wanted dedicated writing days — with no hard stops or guilt trips — and maybe even to host my own retreats.
I realized that the only way to have it all was to leave my marriage.
By the first Sunday in November, the fight we’d been having since my return from Wisconsin was still going strong and my book was three months out from publication. I began to panic about what would happen at home when I needed to be out in the world promoting the most important thing I’ve ever written.
“I’m not going to let this marriage suck all the joy out of my book launch,” I told him, tears streaming down my face. “I want a separation.”
A month later, I was sure I wanted out.
I never misrepresented myself; I was clear from the beginning that writing was my first love, and I believed him when he told me he was a feminist. I didn’t think to question it, because back then — when we were still childless and had jobs that weren’t yet careers — everything mostly worked the way we thought it was supposed to. As I found more professional success, and as motherhood ravaged my mind and body, nothing I ever did as a spouse was enough, and the happily-ever-after fairy tale I’d been sold started to feel more like a jail.
Choosing my career means that now I get to write the stories I wish I had read when marriage felt like something to accomplish. And that, it turns out, is my truly happy ending.
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Good for you, Emily. A good friend of mine wrote a YA that was eventually published to some acclaim. All the way through, from start to finish, her husband, a successful businessman, pooh-poohed her efforts and put roadblocks in her way every chance he got. At first she was devastated but at some point she began to laugh it off, threatening to dedicate her book to him like this:
"To ________, thank you for not believing in me. I never would have finished this book without having to prove something to you."
Happy Book Launch Month, Emily! I separated as my first book was coming out, too. My soon-to-be ex-husband berated me for not dedicating that book to him. He still, to be clear, got a too-kind sentence or two in the actual acknowledgements. But who did I have the audacity to dedicate it to, instead? My brother, who had just died. So, Emily, congratulations, too, on your divorce. And PS: that wasn't my last book, and I suspect this won't be yours either. Onward, to joy!