Off Track Part I

I find it very ironic that while my last post was written in celebration of my marriage to my many derby wives,  this post is written to ruminate on how my real-life marriage has started to fall apart over the past year. I am not the type to write about such personal topics on such a public forum, but I think a discussion of the connections between failed marriages and roller derby is entirely necessary. I am not the first derby girl to experience a failed marriage--in the course of my two seasons, I have seen half a dozen marriages end. So I ponder: Does roller derby ruin marriages?

Roller derby began as a hobby which my husband and I could celebrate together. He was the person who brought St. Louis Roller Derby to my attention in the first place--he encouraged me to attend the games because he knew I would have something in common with all the eclectic women on the rink.  And, when I started publicly skating, I could always count on hearing my husband's voice in the audience chanting "Starry."  He was my biggest fan.

But after the excitement of the new sport wore off, we found that derby got in the way of our time together. On nights which we could be dating, I was at practice with the girls. And on nights when my husband could be pursuing his own hobbies, he would sacrifice his time to come watch me skate, or to nurse the injuries I got from skating, or to listen to me talk about derby, or to watch derby videos with me. You get the point: derby became the sole focus of our marriage and of our lives. 

Now, I have decided that I will be giving up some practice time to go to counseling and I'll let you know what happens.
 
I think our marriage suffered for much more complex reasons than not having time together, though. I think we have changed because I joined a community of women who are primarily single, independent homeowners. In her book Communities of Women, Nina Auerbach, (a feminist author I greatly admire) notes that women thrive when they are members of communities that are comprised of like minded women. She states that communities of women are actually very self sustainable even though as a society we tend to think communities must have male members. I think that by gaining so many female friends who live on their own and make their own choices, I became very independent and started to need my husband in much different and more complex ways than I did when our marriage began 9 years ago.

Derby, of course, is not the only reason that my marriage is struggling. There are hundreds of tiny other issues that we have to work out, but thinking on derby and women and independence at least gives me a place to start when trying to fix the problem.  I need to think about this issue much more and will continue to post about it.