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In October 1782, a woman in Braintree, Massachusetts, sat down and told her husband in writing that she could not keep living the way she had for three years.
He was in Europe. She had a farm, tenants, children at home, and a war that was not over.
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You Are Not Being Dramatic When You Say It Has Been Too Long
John and Abigail Adams married in October 1764. By the time she wrote that letter, his work had taken him away for most of the war, first to Congress in Philadelphia and then twice across the Atlantic.
The longest stretch ran from November 1779 to August 1784, nearly five years. Letters crossed the ocean in wartime, so some took months and some were lost.
She did not spend those years at a window. She ran the farm, supervised the tenants, raised the children at home, and managed the family's money while the Revolution played out near her door.
And she still wrote him that she could not keep living this way.
That is the part the history-class version leaves out. She loved her husband and believed in his work, and she still told him plainly what the distance was costing her.
She even offered to cross the ocean to help carry his load. He answered that if peace came, she would see him the next summer.
In the end, she went to him. Abigail had never been more than fifty miles from home. In the summer of 1784 she crossed the Atlantic with their daughter, and they were together again in London that August.
Here is what made that crossing make sense. He had never stopped writing back. Over their lives the two of them exchanged more than a thousand letters, and the record runs in both directions.
That is the line between a separation and a disappearance. Distance with letters coming back is two people in one story. Distance with nothing coming back is a story only one person is still writing.
If the phone has been silent, the Adams letters are not a reason to keep waiting. They are a picture of what it looks like when someone is on the other end.
And if there is no one right now, the part worth borrowing is the farm. Her years apart were full anyway, with work that was hers and decisions only she could make.
She could miss him. She could keep the farm running. She could say it had been too long.
Whatever has gone on too long in your own life, it can be written down in plain words, even if the only person who reads it is you.
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If something has gone on too long, Chosen in Love walks through how to read where a connection stands and what has to be different if someone comes back. It is free, and it includes a seven-day challenge that starts with five things you bring to a relationship.
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Keep your power in your own hands.
Sofia
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She Was Apart From Him Nearly Five Years and Never Sat Still
In 1782, Abigail Adams wrote her husband that she could not keep living the way she had for three years. What carried them through was not her patience alone. It was letters going both ways.
