Hi Everybody, your friendly world wide web TheHusBlog here, and this post is going to be a little different.  The majority of my posts are a collection of thoughts over a history of experiences, this post is going to be a little more personal.  For the sake of privacy I do not like to go into too much specific personal detail but I have something that I would like to share, but first I have to give some personal background.  To the set the stage for the rest of this post I have to share with you the current situation of my life and marriage.

My wife is currently pursuing her CRNA degree.  For those of you who do not know CRNA stands for Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist.  For her orientation it was requested that spouses attend as well.  I thought they must just want to share with us the program so we know a little more.

We arrived on campus and easily found the location of the orientation.  Standard fare then ensued.  The faculty was introduced, the classes were discussed, and then things got interesting.  The students were then asked to move to a different building and the spouses were asked to remain.  My wife left to go fill out paper work and such and us spouses (about 50% Husbands, 50% Wives) stayed for a speaker.  The speaker was a wife of a student who just finished his first year.  She then spoke about the challenges of the program.  She spoke about feeling like a single parent to their two children.  She spoke about not only having to care for all of his needs, the kids needs, but the lack of help she received from him.  She spoke about his late nights studying, she spoke about thanking God that her parents lived by them so she had some support.  She painted a grim picture indeed. She capped her talk by saying how proud she was of him, how hard the program was, and how he had changed.  After we all politely applauded the room was eerily silent.  I was thinking what I am sure everyone else in that room was thinking, "My wife(or Husband) will be better than that, she(or he) won't let me down."  One of the faculty members came up after the speaker and said these words, that still ring in my ears, "Make no mistake, for the next two and half years, your needs are not going to be met."  I did not know then what she meant.  I thought in that moment, "Well, that is fine, we don't have kids, I have a busy job and we don't have to go out that much, maybe once a month and I would be fine."  I even started planing the various hobbies I was going to take up to pass the time when she was studying.

We take our spouses for granted.  It is just human nature, we get used to certain things and then expect them to happen all the time.  The one thing that we all take for granted is being first in our spouse's life.  Well, let me tell you, once you are no longer first things get hard.  In the beginning we both adjusted.  She was studying morning, noon, and night and I just let her have her space.  But certain things started happening.  First our eating schedules came out of sync.  She could not take breaks to eat so she would heat something up and take it in her office and I would eat alone as well.  Then our sleeping came out of sync.  She would be up later than me studying, and then she would sleep later to make up for it.  Then she would have to get to the gym to workout the stress that she was under.  Now all of a sudden we weren't eating at the same time, sleeping at the same time, or even home at the same time.  Sex was happening maybe once a month and for the most part it was quick.

Our marriage was in trouble in my opinion.  At first I reacted by being kind of distant and angry.  I mean after all I was the most important thing in her life, right?  Wrong.  I wasn't.  Her priorities were :

1. School
2. Studying
3. Sleeping
4. Eating
5. Working Out (stress relief)
6. Husband