The Vacation We Didn’t Know We Needed

Massanutten was supposed to be simple.

Actually, that was the entire point.

We had already done the water park. We had already done Luray Caverns. We weren’t going there trying to squeeze every possible attraction into seven days. Vegas was coming, life had been life-ing, and what I wanted was a low-key family week where we could spend about $300 on entertainment, use the timeshare we already had, bring groceries, and just reset.

What I didn’t realize was how badly The Naboo Protector and I needed that reset.

Because we did not arrive at Massanutten magically transformed into two peaceful, emotionally evolved people simply because there were mountains outside.

We brought our shit with us.

Apparently, Emotional Baggage Fits in the Car

The first couple of days, The Naboo Protector and I barely talked.

We weren’t necessarily having these huge arguments the entire time. It was almost worse than that. There were remnants of everything we had been carrying around in our marriage—the old conversations, frustrations, defensiveness, hurt feelings, things that had been said, things that hadn’t been said, and all the ways we had learned to react to each other.

Eventually, everything came to a head.

At one point I was done.

Like, leave-the-entire-vacation done.

I called my mother and told her I was going to get to a nearby train station and asked her to come get me.

And my mother, being my mother, said okay.

But she also pointed out something neither Frank nor I particularly needed sugarcoated: we were being chaotic.

Both of us.

Now, one thing that can absolutely send me over the edge with The Naboo Protector is his ability to suddenly become extremely calm once I’m already activated. Sir. You were just participating in this circus with me.  Then suddenly I’m the only person who looks like she’s lost her mind.

That pisses me off.

But underneath my irritation was something more important that I eventually had to confront.

Whether The Naboo Protector was calm, chaotic, defensive, quiet, wrong, right, or standing on his head, I was still responsible for what I did next.

And I was exhausted.

I Couldn’t Keep Doing All the Work

Something shifted for me that week.

I started recognizing how much of my constant confronting was actually about control.

I would bring something up.

Then bring it up again.

Then explain it differently.

Then revisit it because I didn’t think it had been adequately resolved.

Then monitor whether the behavior had changed.

Then get frustrated because I was still carrying the mental and emotional responsibility for fixing the thing I had already told another grown person needed fixing.

I told myself I was communicating.

Sometimes I was.

But sometimes I was trying to control the outcome.

There’s a difference.

And somewhere in that townhouse in Massanutten, I started realizing:

I have to let this man do his own work.

Not because the problems don’t matter.

Not because my feelings aren’t legitimate.

Not because I should accept behavior that hurts me.

But because I cannot drag another adult toward growth and then resent him because I’m exhausted from pulling.

At some point, I have to say what I need to say and then let go.

What he does with it belongs to him.

And what I do with his answer—or lack of one—belongs to me.

That realization changed the rest of the vacation.

Then We Did…Almost Nothing

And it was wonderful.

We spent a ridiculous amount of time inside the townhouse.

It wasn’t even our usual unit. We were on a different week this year and ended up a few doors down from the townhouse we’d stayed in before.

We watched movies.

We went to trivia.

We took walks.

We hung around together.

There was no giant itinerary.

No pressure to manufacture a perfect family vacation.

No running ourselves ragged because we paid money to go somewhere and therefore had to EXPERIENCE ALL THE THINGS.

We just existed together.

And after the confrontation at the beginning of the trip, I also did something that has historically been very difficult for me:

I gave The Naboo Protector room to think.

I stopped demanding that every thought, emotion, disagreement, and unresolved issue be processed according to my timetable.

And somewhere in all that quiet, we started enjoying each other’s company again.

Not performing marriage.

Not fixing marriage.

Not analyzing marriage.

Just being married.

Maybe That Was the Point

We left home carrying a lot.

We came home lighter.

Nothing magical happened in Massanutten. We didn’t solve every problem in our marriage. There wasn’t some cinematic conversation where the music swelled and suddenly we understood each other perfectly.

We had a confrontation.

I almost left.

My mother called us chaotic.

I had to confront some uncomfortable things about myself.

The Naboo Protector had things he needed to sit with too.

And then we rested.

That’s it.

But I’m beginning to think rest can do something that constant confrontation can’t.

It creates enough silence for you to hear yourself.

Massanutten forced me to recognize that letting go is not the same thing as not caring.

Sometimes letting go means:

I’ve told you what hurts.

I’ve told you what I need.

I’ve listened to what you have to say.

Now I’m going to stop trying to control what happens inside of you.

That is your work.

And I have my own.

And Then Came Vegas

Looking back, I don’t think our Vegas vacation would have felt the same without that week in Massanutten first.

Vegas was bigger.

Louder.

Busier.

There were flights, people, activities, walking, kids, logistics—the kind of environment where two already-stressed people can get on each other’s damn nerves before they even make it out of the airport.

But we didn’t go into Vegas carrying quite the same emotional weight we’d carried into Massanutten.

We had already had the blowup.

We had already sat in the uncomfortable quiet.

We had already practiced giving each other space.

We had already remembered that we actually enjoy one another.

Massanutten wasn’t the exciting vacation.

It was the required vacation.

The one where we didn’t know we were going there to put some things down.

And maybe that’s why we came home more relaxed than when we left.

We thought we were resting before Vegas.

Maybe we were actually learning how to travel together again.

And maybe, in a much bigger way, we were learning how to travel through this marriage together too.