My memory is fuzzy on some of the details, especially concerning time, so I will do my best to represent it all accurately. But somewhere in here my girlfriend and I had driven her car and a bunch of stuff from my native Indiana all the way to California. We turned this into a road trip passing through the northern tip of Texas on historic Route 66. This meant stopping in St. Louis, Missouri then Amarillo, Texas through Los Angeles, California ending somewhere just south of San Francisco, California. I hope I’m getting these details correct as she and I traveled a lot. It was here, close to San Francisco, where we stayed in another place with another couple and her mom who had come from China to visit. Obviously by this time her parents were aware of our relationship. This was a difficult summer for both of us, as I was unsuccessfully trying to break into the video game industry as a developer/engineer and she was saving up to buy a home. In the end this took too long for me. The games industry isn’t a very lucrative trade especially for those starting out and is not easy to break into. Money and timing pushed me to career pivot. She was already established and was ready to buy a home. I still hadn’t landed my first post-college job.
We moved into the home she bought and I prepared to instead become a Software Engineer, an option I kept in my pocket as a Plan B since college. Becoming a SWE (software engineer) is not easier than building games but it is certainly more lucrative. After many months I was able to land my first job at a company pretty close to where we lived, now in the East Bay close to Oakland. This interlude of no income made her and I both pretty unhappy and landing that first job meant a lot for both of us. This would’ve been sometime in 2017.
It was around 2017 but before my first job that she began asking about marriage. I didn’t want to propose yet as I didn’t feel comfortable doing so without more job stability and I wanted to do something grand and romantic. However she has a habit of ignoring what I say I want and pressuring for the answer she wants continuously. I don’t know how long it took but every night in bed she would ask when I’m going to propose and every night I would say when I have a stable career. Until one night I didn’t. I was so tired of hearing the question that one night out of frustration I said something like “You want to get married? Fine, let’s get married”. And that was my “grand romantic” proposal. So idiotic right? If I could’ve kept my cool it would’ve been a nice moment, instead now I regret proposing so foolishly. So one day we went to our local county clerk’s office and exchanged vows in front of a judge. This was also another moment I lost my cool as I was worried about my job security, as a co-worker was recently let go, but the whole process took much longer than expected and I grew irritated. It was unpleasant.
Later that year we had a formal ceremony at my parents which was a lot of fun and my first time back home in at least a year. Then later that year we had another formal ceremony in China with her family which was also great as my parents were able to visit China for the first time.
Finally we both had jobs, a home, and weren’t crushed by the stresses of post-graduation. This was a really good time with the inevitable hiccup here and there. It was also around this time I started collecting games, one of my main hobbies for a while and a focal point of this blog early on. Life seemed great and great things seemed to be coming our way. My job was close enough I could bike there, so I was exercising everyday, had hobbies, and disposable income. However there was a large gap in our incomes and this constant pressure to make as much as she did weighed heavily on me. This was one of the greatest stresses for me at the time, meaning I didn’t like taking unpaid time off and felt uncomfortable with large expenses. She loves to travel and not only do I not enjoy it as much as her, it ate into my savings and income after I ran out of PTO. So much so I stopped any of my own traveling, like visiting family back in Indiana, because I felt so pressured to make more money. Again the cracks in our foundation should be obvious here.
After roughly two years at my job I was let go as a part of restructuring. This would’ve been in October of 2019. We had moved into several successive rentals closer to her work at this time so her house could be rented full-time. Which meant while I was still at that job I would be commuting roughly an hour north in the mornings, something she had done going south previously. I lost my job and wouldn’t get another one for another eight months. These gaps of unemployment affected her greatly and continued to be a sore point for her, understandably. There is some blame to be levied at me but it’s not easy to change jobs as I’m sure many know.
All of the stress that I was experiencing, no job, no income, living with other renters (something that stresses me quite a bit), and pressure from her put me into a heavy depression. We had planned a trip to the northwest during this time but I backed out at the last minute feeling guilt over not being employed. This really pissed her off and I spent the two days she was gone crying alone in our bedroom. I didn’t know what to do. I felt trapped, unable to land a new position and provide for my wife.
Fortunately I was approached for a contract position at Google that I interviewed for and was accepted into, though it took a couple of months before I started in early 2020. After getting this job we hit our sweet spot of marriage. We were both doing well at work and had a healthy work-life balance. This all occurred before the Covid-19 lockdowns, which changed everything for everyone.
ooglykraken 