living seven – A job in Spartanburg, South Carolina forced a couple into living apart from Washington, DC for nearly two years—creating new routines, extra expenses, and mounting strain. When the husband later returned to DC, the relationship finally steadied, but not before
When my husband’s offer finally landed—after months of job hunting—it sounded like a lifeline. The new role came with a higher salary and a title bump.
The catch was the location. The job was based in Spartanburg, South Carolina, about seven hours from where we’d lived in Washington, DC for the past decade.
Relocating together wasn’t on the table. I’d grown attached to DC after moving there for grad school. and I couldn’t imagine leaving our nontraditional family—our six rescue pets—behind. Still, my husband needed work. For months. viable jobs in our area hadn’t shown up. and he was excited about the company that finally gave him a chance.
So we planned a temporary split: he would move to South Carolina while I stayed in DC. Even though his new position was office-based, we both believed a more hybrid arrangement could be worked out once he got established.
What started as a workaround didn’t become easier—it became its own life.
Before he moved, we decided to buy a single-story house with a sprawling backyard near his job in South Carolina. It was an old fixer-upper that needed a lot of work. but the mortgage payment was cheaper than the rentals we were looking at. Since I worked mostly remotely. we figured I could bring the dogs with me to stay there and hire a cat sitter back in DC whenever I visited.
Only a few months after his move, our plans began to fall apart.
His new company was vehemently opposed to any remote work. That meant we saw each other only on weekends and holidays.
Even those visits grew complicated. Because he took our shared car to South Carolina, it was too expensive for me to fly and pay to board our three dogs. “It would’ve been pricey to board all of our dogs every time I went to South Carolina,” Brittany Kerfoot said.
Instead, the routine became a long drive. My husband would travel through the night to DC nearly every Friday and head back to Spartanburg every Sunday afternoon. The 14-hour round trips took a toll on him, so sometimes we skipped weekend visits just to give him a break from the road.
Back in DC, day-to-day life shifted harder than I expected. Without a car, errands like grocery shopping and vet appointments became much more difficult. Adding to the physical strain, I had a collapsed disc in my back. Walking in a city that’s normally very walkable became more and more difficult until it was nearly impossible.
The loneliness that comes with working from home didn’t stay contained. I found myself working, then spending most evenings on the couch by myself.
Our eldest dog made it worse. She was very attached to her dad, and as he spent longer away, she started acting out—so I couldn’t leave her alone for long stretches either.
And the salary that once felt like security began to look irrelevant. My husband’s higher salary no longer made much of a difference to our lifestyle, given the money I was spending on food and grocery delivery and rideshares, plus our additional mortgage and a climbing renovation budget.
After two challenging years of this arrangement, the pressure finally changed shape—when my husband got a job in DC and moved back.
But even then, the hardest part wasn’t the move. It was the adjustment.
About a year into living apart, I reached my breaking point.
A week before my spinal surgery was scheduled, a pipe in our condo burst and we needed all new floors. I scrambled to file an insurance claim, schedule water mitigation, test out flooring samples, and meet the movers to take out all of our belongings before I checked into the hospital.
There was only so much my husband could do from afar, and it felt like the last straw. I was physically and emotionally overwhelmed.
During my recovery, my friends took care of me during the week until he could make it home each Friday evening. I made it through, but it was still another nine months before he found a job back in DC and could come home.
When he finally moved back, I was thrilled to be a normal couple again. Then I discovered the last blow: I had forgotten how to live with someone else.
Our home felt like my home, and he felt like just a visitor in it. I had developed new systems to manage on my own and I liked doing things my way—so I had to figure out how he fit into that now.
With time and some hard conversations, we worked out the kinks and fell back into our familiar rhythm. Soon, life started to feel more normal, like it used to.
It has now been a year since he’s been back in DC with me. The fixer-upper we bought in South Carolina is also under new ownership.
Looking back, we’ve both agreed living seven hours apart was the worst decision we could have made, and we’ve vowed that no matter what, we will never do it again.
Living apart was difficult for us—but Kerfoot said she’s glad they’re together now.
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