Honey, I'll Bring the Wine, You Bring the E-ZPass

Keeping the marriage spark alive is tough, what with work, bills, kids and their demands to be fed and clothed daily. That's not to mention the three-hour commute for date night.

It's not ideal, but that's the spot a number of couples now face as they stradle the 150-mile distance between Monmouth County and Aberdeen, MD, where one half of the pair now reports for work. When the Army began moving its operations from Fort Monmouth to the Aberdeen Proving Ground, it took some of its workers with it. So did defense contractors who employed Monmouth County residents.

You might think that families would just pick up and follow employers down I-95 to a new life close to that job. But these days, things are a little complicated.

Take the Paul family of Tinton Falls. When Skip retired from the Army in 1998, he and wife Karen thought they had found their forever home here in Monmouth County where they could finish raising their three children. Skip spent 10 years commuting to Manhattan until, as Karen says, "that job went away" three years ago.

Skip was able to find a new job with a defense contractor at Fort Monmouth. Sure, they knew that this job had the potential to be shifted to Maryland, but after the previous job evaporated, the couple was glad for the work. They decided to hang in there to see how things would go.

"It started as maybe he would have to go down once a month for a meeting, then he would stay overnight sometimes and then it was, 'We really need you down here.'"

So for a year Skip did the Monday and Saturday commute between Tinton Falls to Aberdeen, which put wear and tear on their car, on Skip and their marriage.

"You start to do things on your own, get into your own routine," Karen said. "You start making decisions on your own that you should be making together, and that's not good."

While Karen had her friends and community connections, Skip was going home alone to an empty one-bedroom apartment with just a bed and a table. 

"He hated that part," Karen said.

By last winter it was time to reevaluate and the couple started prepping their house here for sale and put it on the market Memorial Day. The realtor said it would be a six-to-12 month wait, so in the meantime they began construction on a townhome in Maryland near Skip's job.

"We sold the house in four days," she said with a laugh. 

With their plans again wrenched, the Paul's moved their belongings to storage and Karen moved into her in-laws house in Lakewood. Now she too had a sizable commute to her job at the The Papery at The Grove in Shrewsbury.

The couple's three children are now grown, her daughter with a family of her own in Connecticut, and her two sons, both captains in the Army, stationed in Georgia and Arizona. Moving without them is something Karen doesn't look forward to. With kids and all their activities, she said, "You can just pop into something."

There are no cub scouts or playgroups for grown-ups to make for instant friends, but Karen said that in their new townhome community she's heard there is a "New Jersey Club."

Karen greets the change with laughter, but she said it's sad to leave the home community she hoped her children could always return to. "That was something they really wanted, a home that was the same," she says of her kids who led the military family life, her daughter attending three different high schools.

Karen has told The Papery that they can count on her through Christmas. Leaving the people at the shop where she has worked for nine years will be hardest, she said. She expects she will make her final commute to her new home in Maryland by the first of the year. Then it will be time to find a new career, a new niche for herself.

"It's my new adventure," she said.