Married to a Touring Musician: Rediscovering My Independence
‘I Was Fiercely Independent—Then I Got Married and Forgot How to Be Alone. Now My Husband’s on Tour, and It’s Time to Relearn My ‘Single Life’ Independence.’
WRITTEN BY LAURA LANDERS (CO-FOUNDER OF SST)
Well well well… isn’t this a niche topic? We all move through life at our own pace, on our own unique paths. But something I’ve noticed as a common thread among married women is this moment—often a few years into marriage—where we look up and wonder: where did my independence go?
It’s not a dramatic loss, just... gradual. Subtle. But real.
As modern women, especially those who’ve left their hometowns behind and moved to big cities, independence becomes our default. It has to. That was me. I moved to Los Angeles at 22, lived solo in the Valley for five years (never quite became a Valley girl, to be honest), and fully embraced that strong, single-woman-in-the-city energy. I was proud. It was hard—but it was the only option.
Then I fell in love. Got married. Moved in with a man for the first time. And almost instantly, I found myself depending on him. Mentally, physically, emotionally.
The shift from surviving on my own to building a life with someone who actually wanted to carry some of the weight with me—it changed me. It unlocked something I hadn’t experienced before: the safety of leaning on someone. Truly leaning. I’d never been that emotionally vulnerable with anyone before. I didn’t even realize how much I’d kept to myself until I saw how much I was opening up to him.
For the first time, I could rest. I could breathe. Jordan was making just enough money for me to slow down my “hustle hustle hustle” mode. And while that part of the story deserves its own post (there's a lot to unpack there), I started noticing a pattern in conversations with other married women: we had all lost a piece of our independence, and none of us were sure how—or if—we could get it back.
That fiercely independent, solo version of me felt far away. I couldn’t figure out how to reclaim her. I still wanted to do everything with my husband. I didn’t want to go anywhere alone—not to the store, not for a walk, not even to grab coffee. We eventually moved halfway across the country, and still, I couldn’t break that dependency.
And then… Jordan started touring full-time. Suddenly, I had a spouse on tour and was alone in a city with no family and barely any friends. All. The. Time.
But instead of jumping back into my old ‘independent’ rhythm, I found myself resisting. I still didn’t want to run errands by myself. I still didn’t want to leave the house. I chalked some of it up to being a “homebody” or an “ambivert”—equally introverted and extroverted—but the truth ran deeper.
If I’m honest, a lot of this goes back to childhood stuff (don’t worry, we’re not diving into that today). Let’s just say: unless I had a schedule or specific reason to leave the house growing up, I usually didn’t. And now as an adult—with no kids + a WFH job—there’s no real external need to go anywhere.
That is… until I started seeing a chiropractor regularly. I had an injury that needed regular visits. A few times a week, like clockwork. And something surprising happened: I started to enjoy it. Not just the appointments, but the conversations. The casual small talk. The friendly familiarity.
Somewhere in those interactions, ‘solo Laura’ started showing up again. The one that felt like she could leave the house and things would be ok. Social butterfly Laura started showing up, too. It was small, but it was real.
And it felt… good.
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But let’s be real—this isn’t some miracle story where a few chiropractor visits magically restored me to my former self. What it did do was give me a nudge. Just enough momentum to catch a glimpse of the parts of me I’d missed—the sides that get a little lost when I lean on my spouse for everything.
I’m realizing that when I stop expecting Jordan to be the fix for every emotional need I have, I start reconnecting with “Independent Laura” again. The one who once handled it all on her own. The one who found joy, confidence, and strength in her solitude.
Anyone in a long-term, committed relationship knows: it’s actually much harder to share a life with someone than to be on your own. And that’s the real reason I’m writing this. Because the reward of doing life together—through the messy, beautiful process of rediscovering who you are within a partnership—is so worth it.
This life I live now—married but often physically alone—creates a strange kind of tension. Without kids or other dependents, it can feel like I’m single in the day-to-day, but emotionally tied to someone miles away. It’s a weird limbo. And in that space, I’ve started craving the richness of life’s little moments again. The ones that don’t come with as much anxiety. The ones that remind me who I am outside of my marriage.
Because she’s still in there. And she’s worth finding.
WRITTEN BY LAURA LANDERS
