Item from the Smart Marriages Archive, reproduced in the Divorce Statistics Collection

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aturday, January 9, 2000 - Christian Science Monitor

Commuter Marriages Test More Americans

By Francine Kiefer, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Amid packing boxes and furniture they hadn't seen since Little Rock days,
the Clintons awoke Thursday to a new phase in their life: the commuter
marriage.

But while they're now the nation's highest-profile commuter couple - and
the first presidential duo in which the wife has moved out of the White
House - there are millions more Americans like them. Sort of.

Long-distance marriages are on the rise in the United States, reflecting
an era of dual-income households and of women, like Mrs. Clinton,
pursuing careers of their own.

The trend is driven by a host of factors, including convenient jet travel
and couples having fewer children. But even as it opens career doors,
experts say it can strain marriages at a time when Americans seem more
concerned about family breakdown.

Commuter marriages are especially prevalent among educated professionals,
like the Clintons, who either don't have children or whose children have
left the nest, say sociologists and psychologists.

And it tends to involve lines of work that offer some flexibility, such
as politics, journalism, or academia.

In fact, "commuter marriages are a regular feature of political life,"
says Judith Wallerstein, author of "The Good Marriage" (Warner Books).
Legislators typically divide their time between a home district and their
offices in Congress or a statehouse.

But unlike the president and first lady, most couples who work in
separate cities can't call up a motorcade or military jet to get home
whenever they want - or send the bill to taxpayers. And, unlike the
president, most spouses left holding down the fort probably don't have
cooks, gardeners, and other help to take care of all the household
duties.

"[The Clintons] have access to transportation and to various resources
that most people just don't have," says Naomi Gerstel, a sociologist at
the University of Massachusetts in Amherst who studies commuter
marriages.

In 1998, 2.4 million Americans said they were married but that their
spouses did not live at home, a 21 percent increase from four years
before, according to the US Census Bureau. These were not people who
considered themselves "separated" - which implies a troubled marriage.

Sociologists like Ms. Gerstel caution that these data include military
couples who spend long periods apart. Still, anecdotal evidence confirms
that the trials of long-distance relationships are spreading far beyond
military ranks.

How well these marriages work, however, is another question.

Tremendous stress can bear down on these relationships. There are two
residences and schedules to coordinate. Travel and phone costs increase.
If the situation goes on for years, each person can develop a separate
life that becomes unknowable to their partner. Worries about infidelity
increase.

And if there are young children involved - the greatest challenge of all,
according to experts - the person left at home inevitably bears the brunt
of raising those children.

Still, everyone interviewed for this story agreed that, while a commuter
marriage can speed a divorce - the outcome for half of all US marriages -
it is usually not the underlying cause of one.

"The substance of marriage is dependent on other things," says the Rev.
James Ford, who, as 21-year chaplain for the US House of Representatives,
has heard an earful about the strains of weekend flights back home and
long stretches on the campaign trail.

Anne Northrup, a congresswoman from Kentucky, says it's her rock-solid
marriage of 30 years, and the fact that five of her six children are up
and out, that account for a commuter marriage that "works really well."

She would never have run for Congress when her kids were small, says this
Republican, who has been commuting between Louisville and Washington for
three years.

But now she's in a new phase of her life, one in which she can work
straight through till midnight if she wants to. Still, she gets homesick
in her studio apartment, especially when it's the end of the
congressional year and she's having to spend five days a week or longer
in Washington.

"In the last three or four weeks, every time I would find myself coming
through the airport, coming home, with the biggest grin on my face, and
leaving on Monday choking back tears," she says.

The president and first lady say they will try and see each other as much
as they can, though it wasn't until the last minute that the president
decided he could accompany his wife as she moved into their five-bedroom
Dutch colonial on Old House Lane in Chappaqua, N.Y.

While gossips wag about the implications for the Clinton marriage, the
White House and others point out that the first couple won't necessarily
spend more time apart now. Last year alone, Mr. Clinton made more than 80
visits to various states sans Hillary.

He also spent about 30 days overseas without his wife - and that doesn't
count the trips she made without him.

"Whatever you can say about them, I guess it's true that somehow, one way
or another, they've made some kind of emotional, psychological, or just
physical accommodation for being apart over quite a significant period of
time," says Barbara Defoe Whitehead, of Rutgers University's National
Marriage Project. "You could argue that proves it can be done, or you
could argue that's one of the problems."

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