Would You Leave Your Husband Because He Doesn’t Like to Fly and You Love to Travel?

A Valentine’s tale of love and borrowed fear

Five years into our marriage, my husband telephoned me from Denver’s airport, shaken to his core. I never imagined the profound impact it would have on our future lives.

The principal of his school mandated his attendance at a three-day educational conference in Colorado. After a family emergency prevented the original participant from going, the scheduled trip was within days.

My husband had little choice but to travel by air, as his inherited time constraints squelched any alternative. He hadn’t been comfortable flying since the early 2000s, when planes seemed to fall out of the sky.

The night before the trip, I could feel his anxiety — all our nerve endings felt cross wired just beneath the surface of my skin. We didn’t sleep well.

Was I afraid for him, too?

When he left the next day, I tried to sound as upbeat as possible. “Don’t worry honey, it’ll be fine.” We kissed, and I said a silent prayer. I had witnessed his discomfort on previous flights. He nearly hyperventilated through takeoff and landing. It was enough to make me squirm.

I was uncertain how he would fare unaccompanied, but hoped for the best. “Call me as soon as you land.”

“Hello?”

“You won’t believe what happened — it was horrible! There’s no way I’m taking a plane back home. Please find me a return ticket on Amtrak,” he said.

“What happened?”

“An hour before landing, turbulence took control of the plane — nosedives thrashed anything not nailed down. Oxygen masks dropped, drinks flew across the aisles — a woman sitting in a window seat hit the pane so hard by the time we landed she had a knot on her forehead as big as a golf ball.”

“Oh my God, are you okay?”

“I think so, but I cannot fly home.”

“Have a stiff drink and try to relax. Call me when you get to the hotel.”

We talked until we both felt sleepy. After the conference, he made it home safely and traveled nowhere on an airplane until ten years ago.

Neither had I, except for the occasional business trip I couldn’t squirm my way out of with a little white lie. I, too, had avoided air travel. What was happening?

One year, I had to meet a colleague in Atlanta. Finding Waldo would have been easier than a direct flight from where I live. I had to change planes in Chicago. Take off and departure twice. Two times the risk.

Just as my what ifs grew in morbidity, my husband called. I decided not to share my newfound angst with him. Prior to our marriage, flying was second nature — I’d been flying since I was five. After college, I gallivanted all over Europe, the Caribbean, and lived in Hawaii for two years.

The spirit of aloha had enveloped my soul in a way I was defenseless to ignore or escape. I longed to share my little island paradise airbrushed by God with the love of my life — the place besides home I held dearest to my heart.

As if I could wish it away, I hoped my husband’s fear would eventually dissipate. Meanwhile, I appreciated the universe was on my side. It kept throwing subtle hints our way as I waited patiently for the planets to align in my favor.

On two occasions during our marriage, opportunities arose that would take us there, free. In a travel booth at a street festival — an all-expense paid trip to Hawaii. Years later, my job sent me there on a business trip — again, all expenses paid. I begged my husband to go.

I can’t take off in the first week of January after being off the entire two weeks of Christmas vacation. How will I explain that to the principal?”

“You have plenty of time — it’s only August.”

The first of the year, I jetted off to Hawaii alone for seven days. Every day I answered the embarrassing question from colleagues who all brought spouses with sunny dispositions, “why didn’t your husband come?”

My standard answer, “he couldn’t get the time off from work,” ushered a slow burn in my chest like a tiny needle dipped in wasabi before pricking my heart. His coworkers coaxed him into admitting his monumental err in judgment. He apologized and life went on until the next time my repressed dream of returning to paradise surfaced.

My fragmented understanding of my husband’s fear had created a major dilemma. I questioned his faith. Deeply spiritual — yet he had permitted cohabitation of fear and faith — a paradox unfathomable to me.

“Who am I to pass judgment on anyone’s fear?” I’m afraid of driving up a steep hill.

“How could he ever live a fulfilling life if his fear of death kept him from truly living?” He simply didn’t see it that way. In his mind, every day is fulfilling. I can’t disagree with that either.

My epiphany — his fear hadn’t prevented him from living a fulfilled life. It was I his fear had restricted based on my perception. Our personal truths seemed misaligned.

He believed the experience of enjoying each other no matter what we were doing created paradise — sweet, right? I thought paradise was on the island of Oahu.

Travel lacked significance in his world. He thought my desire to travel elsewhere negated all the great times we had shared on our local jaunts up and down the Pacific coast. Not true, but I still had a strong desire to venture outside of what I considered a stale circumference — places we could travel by car or train.

Had I not compromised enough?

With grown children, the realization I had more life behind than ahead hit me like a 40-pound sandbag. So, when a friend shared her intention to marry her fiancé on the island of Oahu and invited me to join I asked myself — have I conspired with the universe to give me one more chance to follow my heart?

I could no longer live in the shadow of my husband’s fear — it was time to let go. When I announced I was going without him, he blew me off. Until a week prior to leaving, when he saw me packing. After a rather heated discussion, I rearranged my flight to include him.

We went to my island paradise two years in a row — had a blast.

I’ve often wondered why the thought of me going alone was more frightening than dying in a plane crash.