I spent eight months planning our first big family vacation to Florida. Flights, hotel, activities, snacks for our three kids\u2014I handled everything.<\/p>\n
My husband, Mark, barely seemed interested.<\/p>\n
Then, at baggage claim, he casually said, \u201cBy the way, some college friends are staying an hour away. I\u2019m going to spend three days golfing and fishing with them.\u201d<\/p>\n
I stared at him.<\/p>\n
Three days out of our seven-day family vacation.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ll be fine,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
So I smiled and told him, \u201cHave fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
The next morning, Mark left.<\/p>\n
And I made my own plans.<\/p>\n
I called a beautiful family resort in the Florida Keys that I had always wanted to visit. Mark had previously called it too expensive and \u201cnot his thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
I canceled the rest of our original reservation, packed the kids, and moved us there.<\/p>\n
For three days, we swam, paddleboarded, searched for shells, ate by the ocean, and laughed more than we had in years.<\/p>\n
Then Mark returned to the original hotel.<\/p>\n
Our room was empty.<\/p>\n
When he called, he was crying.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere are you?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSomewhere beautiful,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you leaving me?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know. But I\u2019m done making sure everyone else is happy while nobody asks what I want.\u201d<\/p>\n
When we finally flew home, Mark was waiting at baggage claim with red eyes.<\/p>\n
Then he said something I had never heard from him before:<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I finally know what you need.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I spent eight months planning our first big family vacation to Florida. Flights, hotel, activities, snacks for our three kids\u2014I handled everything. My husband, Mark, barely seemed interested. Then, at baggage claim, he casually said, \u201cBy the way, some college friends are staying an hour away. I\u2019m going to spend three days golfing and fishing …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9197,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9196"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9198,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9196\/revisions\/9198"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}