I really feel for you about the trailing spouse issue and how that's shaped your employment for the rest of your life. As a lapsed academic, this isn't the first time I've seen this happen, and there's no real gender divide on this. It goes both ways. I've known some superstar female academics whose husbands languish as instructors for years.
It sounds like you've made as much peace with it as you could. What's your passion? Do you miss writing, publishing, academia? It sounds like you were pretty accomplished and that the way the original hire went years ago has eroded your confidence. I could be totally off base here - and correct me if I am! I was just wondering if there was a way to reclaim your own professional identity -- not by going back to work, since you don't want to do that. I mean reclaim your own accomplishments in whatever way you can. It does sound (at least to an outsider) that you have residual resentment about how all that went down. Do you think that's playing into any of this?
Has he ever acknowledged your sacrifice on that front?
Maybe I'm an outlier on this, but I really feel great not working and even having given up my professional identity. I totally bought into what I now consider the myth that an intelligent woman *needs* to have a career and/or children (and preferably both) in order to be fulfilled. Actually, I think it would have been more fulfilling to have a career if academia was a fundamentally different place than it is (but it's not) and my particularly field (foreign language literature) was fundamentally different than I eventually learned that it was (lots and lots of complex analysis and research, little of which makes any real difference in the world at large nor even attempts to learn any kind of truth about literature, history, culture, etc.) I also simply craved real community and I wasn't getting that in academia. So, although I wound up quitting because of a complex situation that simply wasn't working out for us as a couple, I'm actually feeling happy about it in a way that I could have barely conceived many years ago when I started down the academic path.
So, my life now? Frankly, it's finding the balance between intellectual work and community that I don't think I could have ever found in academia. My husband and I joined a lay-led Unitarian Universalist society where I founded a choir (which I still direct), where I work on the "program planning team" to choose our speakers every week, where I was asked to co-author a "Covenant of Right Relations," where I serve on the board of directors and help out in many other ways. We love this place, we totally agree with the message (we don't have to pretend to believe things we don't believe), but most importantly of all, I feel like a have a true, real-life, in person social network -- lots of interesting friends and acquaintances who all know each other -- for the first time in many years.
I sing (classical) and, in fact, am performing an aria from Bach's B minor mass in a couple of weeks.
I also bird a lot by myself and with my husband. It's a great way of just chilling out in nature, or being competitive and finding a terrific rare warbler, or hanging out at a hotspot with birding friends (birding circle and fellowship circle overlap a little).
I'm in two different book clubs. One is more social where we might or might not discuss the book. The other is smaller and much more serious. There are only three of us, but we are all "retired" university profs. Currently, we are reading Ulysses. It's just like a grad seminar but without all the stress and sleepless nights. Another friend is an retired Spanish professor who has graciously offered to teach a free Spanish course for me and two other friends (just paid $29.99 for the course materials and that's it).
I keep my French up by communicating with 3 francophone friends I have in France and Switzerland. Two of them I Skype with about 1x/ week. (<=== FREE!!)
I love to cook and my husband loves my cooking, so I do a lot of that too. And of course, I do about 98% of the housework -- the gardening; the shopping; most of the laundry; all of the cooking; the cleaning; the trip planning -- hotels, flight, rental cars, sign hubby up for travel health clinic if necessary, get the visas if necessary, etc.; and, like I said, all of the finances. Whenever anything breaks, I'm in charge of getting it fixed. I have to say that I am not at all handy, so this generally involves getting a repair person involved.
Mostly, it's a win-win for myself and my husband. I'm have a great time and I'm actually making his life easier. We never really needed my extra salary and in the past, he wound up having to do things like the finances, repairs, etc. himself because I was too busy to deal with it. I am also physically present. When I was actively involved in academia, I'd have to travel for conferences or even spend months abroad with fellowships. I know that he much prefers my actually being here!
So, thanks for the support, but I really like the place where I am now. I feel like I have a fulfilling, interesting life which is frugal to boot (as long as we don't consider all the exotic travel which could easily be reduced if necessary .. and ... is not the thing that makes me the happiest).
The only thing I am considering doing a little differently is teach myself more about technology. My undergraduate degree was in computer science and that was my first career. I really enjoyed programming (the long hours, looming deadlines, silly workplace politics and bad bosses not so much) and think that if I could get back into this I would have a good fall back in case for some reason I really did need to make some money. Besides, knowledge about technology in our society == power (even if it isn't immediately translated into a salary).
Of course, I could always teach French as an adjunct, but I didn't go this route because the pay is humiliatingly low -- about $1000 for a 3-credit course, which means about $8,000 (gross) for 9 months of full-time work. No way! I probably have saved that much just by taking the time to get a great re-finance deal on our house, cooking at home, not having to buy work clothes, etc.