So I Married a Museum Professional: 6 Truths About Duel Museum Households

 

 

It’s the dream scenario – you meet someone who is as passionate about museums as you are, you fall in love and then marry them. Life is great being married to a museum professional. We are both in jobs we love and are using our degrees in ways that neither of us thought possible 10 years ago. We are in similar content areas with similar education and experiences, so for us, our careers will forever be an interesting journey.

I hope that someday, all museums are so well funded that museum pros can marry other museum pros and can do this will finally paying off their student loans before they turn 65. Until then, we are dealing with a field that is broken. Perhaps this is the sacrifice that we must make to marry for love and chase our passions? It’s the best thing in the world being married to a museum professional, even though there are some challenges.

A goal of this blog is to get a little personal by sharing my own joys and challenges. How I even met my husband is its own story, because it involves history and museums. However, today I want to talk about the realities of being a dual-museum career household. I am sharing my experience, which will not be the same for anyone else. If you know one museum pro, then you know one museum pro. We are all different. I am sharing our experience because I know that we are not the only dual-museum career households. I have no solution to the challenges that we face, but I want to offer this as encouragement to those of you. And so that maybe you can say, “OMG us too.”

Here are some truths that I’ve found about being married to a museum professional.  

1. We will never (probably) leave the Washington, DC metro area. Or at the very least, we will always have to live in a major metropolitan area. For us both to have viable career options, we need to stay here. As much as the idea of living in an area with a lower cost of living is appealing, we would compete for the same job at the same institutions (of course, that has happened to us before…again, a story for a different day).
2. We check jealousy at the front door. It can be easy to feel like we are in constant competition with each other, but we’ve done well at not going down that road. At the end of the day, we acknowledge that we are each other’s partner in crime. We celebrate each other’s triumphs and commiserate (not gloat) with each other’s misfortunes. I think this is something that can apply to your friendships with other museum pros, it is important to be supportive and encouraging, not snide, judgmental and jealous of their accomplishments. We work our tail feathers off for what we earn. We should elevate not downgrade.
3. We make financial sacrifices. We are fortunate enough to live in the DC metro area where museum jobs pay better than in some parts of the country. We are unfortunate that the cost of living here is extremely expensive. This necessitates a few lifestyle adjustments to live our lives and pursue our passions. We live on a budget, so this means that we are sometimes homebodies and will probably never see Hamilton.
4. We have the best conversations at home. We brainstorm constantly and give each other ideas. If I need someone to review something that I’ve written, I can show it to him. It shouldn’t surprise you, that he’s been very supportive of my blog and often gives me ideas for new posts, and snaps photos when we visit museums because I might need it for a post. Someday, I swear, we should run a museum together because we would be awesome at it.
5. While museum conversations at home are great, it is important to recognize when to switch off the museum talk. I could talk about museums all day since I’m obsessive about them, but Sam needs to take a break at a certain point. If we were any TV couple, we would be Leslie Knope and Ben Wyatt. It is important to know when it is time to set aside work and just be with each other. Again, this is something that we should keep in mind with our friends. If we aren’t at a conference, then we don’t need to solve all the museum problems over all 15 courses at friendsgiving. With my friends, we do talk about museums, but we also talk a lot about travel, food, our families, our cats, our dogs, and anything else that we just need to cover over a big helping of pumpkin pie.
6. Our vacation itineraries are built around museums, historic sites, or national parks. True story – we went to Mexico last year.
   • Everyone asked, “Oh…are you going to Cancun for the resorts?”
   • We were like “no, Mexico City.”
   • Then everyone was like “Oh…that’s interesting. Why?”
   • And the response was – “pyramids and cultural institutions.”

And I kid you not, the entire trip was museums and pyramids, and one amazing solo pedestrian trek across the city for mole.

Where will our next trip be? Not sure, but where we go will be full of museums.

Any other museum professional couples out there? Shoot me a note! I’d love to hear your story and any truths that you have about being paired with another museum pro.