Living Apart Full-time While Married
With advice from Daniel Boone on the topic
“‘Elbow room!’ cried Daniel Boone.” This was the refrain in a biography my fourth-grade teacher read our class. We nine-year-old kids looked forward to the end of each chapter so we could shout it along with Daniel as he kept moving on. In the book, his need for wide open space was the rationale for the part he played in exploring the frontier west of the Appalachians. Clearly, this refrain resonated with me as I still think of it sixty years later. Oddly, I even think it sheds light on my divorce twenty-seven years ago.
In 1994, my now ex-husband and I separated after twenty-one years of marriage. Trying to disrupt our children’s lives as little as possible, we each rented our own apartment, and took turns moving back into the family home when it was our custodial week. At that time, my dad said something that remains the most understanding thing anyone has ever said to me. He said he hoped my husband and I got back together again, but even if we did, he thought we should keep my apartment because I am the sort of person who needs lots of quiet time and personal space, and so it would be nice for me to go there from time to time. Given that Dad was a frugal man and a very traditional thinker, this was radical. He clearly understood fourth-grade literature:
