▸ Column · Modern-day domestic (2020s), Tucson ceramics studio and Minneapolis relocation scenario — no era shift from the source letter.
GOKU replies.
The letter
My husband dropped the news over wine last Thursday — he'd accepted an architecture job in Minneapolis, already signed, starting in five weeks. We've been in Tucson for years. I have a ceramics studio I built from nothing over four years, and our daughter is a junior in high school. His explanation for not saying anything sooner was that he didn't want to get me worked up over something that might not come through — as though a move of 1,600 miles works like a lottery ticket you don't tell anyone about until you cash it. He's calling it a gift to our family, pointing to the salary bump and the future it opens. But I never had a seat at the table. Now I'm somehow the one causing problems for not immediately packing, and there are actual moving boxes sitting in the garage that he ordered without asking me. What do I do when a decision this enormous happens to me instead of with me?
Goku replies
Heh. I read this a couple times because the more I got into it, the more I kept going — man, I know this from the other side.
Chi-Chi has had some things to say about decisions I made without asking her. More than once. I stayed gone for years — she found out I was coming back when Gohan showed up to tell her. I signed Gohan up for things she'd made her position pretty clear on. Every time I figured I could see the right answer, so why slow it down. But what I was actually doing was taking her turn in a fight she had just as much right to be in.
That's what this is. Scott didn't just pick a job — he declared the whole match over before you stepped into the ring. And a win you hand yourself before the other person shows up doesn't count.
The salary and the "real future" thing — I'll be honest, that part confuses me. The studio you spent four years on is real. Ines being mid-year in school is real. Those things don't stop being real because someone waved a bigger paycheck at them.
Take a breath, eat something if you haven't already — you fight better on a full stomach, trust me on that — and then tell him clearly: I needed to be in this decision, and you took that from me. He probably wasn't trying to be cruel. But he took your turn anyway. So take it back now. That's where you start.
— Goku
Frieza weighs in
How quaint. The monkey expounds on fair fights — he who returned from the dead without informing his wife and apparently considers that a gift of sorts, too. The consistency is, I admit, charming.
Your husband made a choice. Choices are permitted. What the signed paperwork cannot accomplish is requiring you to follow him there. The studio. The daughter's school year. You, yourself. None of it is his to relocate. You haven't been deprived of a vote, darling — you've been handed leverage. Whether Minneapolis acquires your presence is the single variable on this table he couldn't touch. Do try not to forget that.
— Frieza
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