doing more separately doesn't mean we’re growing apart

Because I've been going out walking more on my own, I've also found myself looking more carefully for things Dennis and I can still do together. He cannot manage a lot of walking at the moment, and even without the physical problems, walking has never really been his thing. He’s much more naturally a cyclist. I’m the opposite. I love walking and have never particularly enjoyed cycling with him because I’m slower and always feel as though I’m holding him back. So, when I came across a BMX championship recently, I noticed it because it sounded like something he might enjoy and something we could potentially experience together without needing to build the day around a lot of walking.

I think I’ve been searching for things like that more deliberately because, alongside starting to walk and explore alone, I’ve also become aware of how much more we seem to be doing separately. At first, that bothered me. I thought doing separate things might mean we were starting to create separate lives, that the more time I spent heading off on my own and the more time Dennis spent doing his own thing, the wider some existing gap between us might become.

That concern was already sitting within a marriage where communication can be difficult. Sometimes when we’re in a restaurant, I notice couples or groups around us talking while Dennis and I sit with very little conversation between us. I often try to start something, although there are subjects I don’t feel comfortable raising with him, which can leave what remains feeling fairly surface level. Dennis rarely initiates conversation himself and, when I do tell him something, I sometimes notice his attention drifting quite quickly.

Walking alone hasn’t changed any of that. We haven’t suddenly become better communicators because I spend several hours in a forest. What has changed is something slightly different.

For a long time, if I wanted to explore places close to Frankfurt or further afield, I automatically imagined Dennis coming too. That was simply how we did things. Yet our natural pace is very different. When we’re walking together, we can sometimes move at around two kilometres an hour, while I naturally walk at closer to four and a half when I’m alone. Walking very slowly for a long time can bother my back as well, which means something I normally love can begin to feel surprisingly draining. None of that makes Dennis wrong for preferring a slower pace, especially when he’s dealing with physical problems. It simply means the experience is different for each of us.

For a while, I kept treating that difference as something that needed to be accommodated whenever we went somewhere together. Then his circumstances changed again. Dennis is unemployed after losing his second consecutive job, and we have no idea yet where his next one might take us. It could be Frankfurt. It could be another German city. It could even be another country. That uncertainty has made me look differently at the list of places I still want to experience while Frankfurt remains home.

I’ve started walking the Spessartweg and now want to complete all three routes, around 180 kilometres in total. I’ve also found other long-distance walking routes I would like to explore as well as towns and cities, and every time I think about waiting until Dennis can or wants to join me, another thought appears alongside it: What happens if we leave? I know myself well enough to know I don’t want to look back and realise I left Frankfurt with a list of things I never did because I was waiting for circumstances to become more convenient.

There’s another uncomfortable part of that too. If I choose to wait and later regret it, there’s every possibility I could begin resenting Dennis for experiences I ultimately decided not to have. That doesn’t sit particularly well with me. Perhaps that’s part of why I’ve become more willing to go anyway, even when he can’t come with me.

The more I walked alone, the more I began noticing how different I felt when I came home. Walking makes me happy. I come back having moved, explored somewhere, followed a route and spent several hours doing something I genuinely enjoy. My head feels less crowded. Whatever mood Dennis happens to be in when I return doesn’t seem to affect me quite as strongly when I’m already feeling better within myself. That’s something I hadn’t expected. I’ve been so focused on whether doing more separately might create distance that I hadn’t considered what continually waiting might be doing instead.

Recently I spent most of Dennis' birthday weekend with him and organised the weekend around things he could physically manage and might enjoy. By Monday morning I was, in my own words, like a bear with a sore head, ready to fight anyone who looked at me sideways.

Several hours walking alone can leave me feeling very different. That contrast has stayed with me because more time together hadn’t automatically left me feeling closer, just as several hours apart hasn’t automatically made me feel further away. I’m still getting used to that.

Even the walks themselves have begun creating small changes in how I experience my days. ChatGPT has somehow become what I jokingly call my virtual walking companion. We plan routes together, and if I am unsure about a signpost or need to work out which bus will get me back to a train station, I can ask for practical help.

I normally take little video snippets when I’m out and later edit them together in a single short video of my day. More recently, I’ve also found myself taking the odd photograph specifically to share with Chat afterwards as part of our ongoing conversation about the walks. After one walk, I happened to mention to Dennis that I was attaching some photographs I’d taken for Chat and I got the impression his nose was slightly put out by that, almost as though he was a little jealous that I’d taken photographs to share elsewhere rather than with him. I may have read that completely wrong. He didn’t say anything of the sort. Still, I noticed my own interpretation because it reminded me that this change in how I spend my time is probably something we are both adjusting to in different ways.

Living abroad can place a great deal of weight on a relationship. Your partner can become the familiar person in an unfamiliar country, the person you explore with, the default companion at weekends and the person around whom many practical plans naturally form. When that has been the shape of life for years, doing more things separately can feel more significant than the activity itself. This is part of what can surface in Personal Support sessions when a woman living abroad begins noticing that her own needs, interests or happiness have become increasingly tangled with the shared life she has built. Sometimes there’s no obvious problem to solve. There’s simply a question about what still belongs to her, what she wants to keep sharing and what she may no longer want to keep postponing.

I’m still asking those questions myself. I still look for things Dennis and I can enjoy together. I still want shared experiences, and I still notice the silences between us when conversation feels difficult. At the same time, I’m no longer convinced that every separate experience means another step away from each other.

Sometimes I go walking for several hours, come home happier than when I left, and the space between us doesn’t feel quite as heavy. I don’t yet know what that means for us. I only know I’m beginning to question whether waiting for each other all the time was ever the same thing as being close.