We've been married almost twenty years, and during the first five of those my husband was in grad school. My situation is a little different from yours because I was in grad school too for most of that time, in a totally different field, but I was closer to the real world because humanities grad students get smaller stipends than grad students in the physical sciences and I not only had to do a lot more teaching but also temp in offices in downtown Chicago during the summers.

It was frustrating, though. I went off on my first international trip for a month the summer before he was defending, and one of the most painful memories I have is that he was so glued to his work that he just dropped me off on the curb outside departures and drove off. But he was under a tremendous amount of stress then, and surprisingly, where I'd expected not to talk to him the whole time I was in the UK, we ended up racking up quite an overseas phone bill because he realized how lonely he was and how hard it was to face the enormous task of getting his computing runs done in time to defend without me there, even if I was in the apartment and he was in his lab. That fall he was so swamped he never came home and showered in the basement of his research building and slept in his chair, and I'd bring him Thai food and burritos late at night and grade papers while he worked. He defended, strangely enough, the day of the 1996 presidential election--both he and Bill Clinton came through with flying colors. He's now a tenured university professor at a major Midwestern research institution, but I have to say that the road to that hasn't been easy, either--postdocs and job anxiety are often not fun--though the money has gotten progressively better and we were finally able to buy a house when he got his faculty job offer several years ago.

One thing that really helped was making friends with his classmates and their wives/girlfriends (all his classmates were male)--some of these women are still my friends, and I'm closer to them now than he is to their husbands. The support group suggestion is a really good one for the same reason. You need to be around other people--particularly other women--who are going through the same situation as you. You need their sympathy and they yours, and all the advice on coping you can give each other.

Another thing: you probably cut him a lot of slack because he's so busy, but don't let him off too much on shared housework responsibilities. I tended to take on most of this under the misguided assumption that I was making less than my husband was, when in reality I was doing more work for less money (the work he was being paid to do contributed directly to his Ph.D., while the teaching and temping, for me, was a huge distraction from my dissertation research). I also tended to believe that what he was doing was more important than anything I would ever do, and so it was my duty to serve him. Don't fall into that trap either...it's near nigh impossible to scramble out of.

The really important thing, though, is that you need to feel that you're not just running in place and paying the bills while he's abandoning you to follow his passion. Make sure you're following yours, too, even if it's not necessarily your job. That really helps with the loneliness. I quit my frustrating, low-paying, exhausting job a year after we got married to pursue a grad degree of my own...I never finished it, but I don't regret that now. It gave me what I needed--a sense of self and dignity that allowed me to feel that I was just as smart and talented as he was.

I don't remember who it was that brought up the guy who left his wife for another student he got pregnant, but that is so unhelpful here. The vast majority of married grad students are studying in good faith that they're going to make a better life for themselve and their wives/partners and families. Keep in mind that it does come to an end at some point, and it's usually worthwhile, but that you're never going to be married to a guy who goes to work at 8 and comes home at 5 and has an otherwise "normal" life with you...at least not while he's in grad school...and if he continues to be an academic, probably never. (But he does get summers and Christmas break off...)

"I don't care if he's black, white, green or purple" again. Really and truly.

The end of the world will happen when the spambots take over.

Or maybe it will end in gray goo.

I was sorry not to see these two among the debunked theories. More sleepless nights. Oh, well.

Yeah to whoever said that what's really considered unconscionable is that a woman shouldn't want a baby, or a pregnancy, and talk about it openly. It's not creepy. You people who think there's no difference between an embryo and a breathing, flesh and blood human child, and that this parasite always takes precedent over its host, wanted or not, you're creepy.

I always kind of admired Trunk for her honesty and ambition. She's finally going in my Twitter feed.