My husband and I live in different countries for most of the year. 

Here’s how we make it work

By Holly Nilson-Clay
April 23rd, 2026

For most of the year, my husband and I live in different countries.

He’s based in the U.S., working on a military base and putting in long hours flying as he builds towards his next chapter, supporting our family financially from there. 

I’m in Spain with our two boys, working remotely,  handling the school runs, the routines, and the day-to-day life that has to keep moving regardless of where he is.

On paper, it doesn’t make much sense. In practice, it’s the version of life that, for now, works best for our family.

It doesn’t just work - we make it work, by each carrying different parts of it. 

This wasn’t the original plan.

We thought this would be a short chapter, a few years at most, while he worked towards a new phase in his career that would eventually give us more flexibility as a family. Something that would let us live in the same place again without constantly trading off time for stability.

But timelines shifted. Training started later than expected. Opportunities changed. And what we thought would be temporary stretched into something less defined. Now, we measure time a bit differently; in visits, in countdowns, in how long until we’re all in the same place again.

One of the things my husband has always said, from the very beginning, is: “it’s only temporary.”

It started when we were first together and long distance, and it’s carried through everything since. Deployments, training, all of it. And most of the time, he’s right. It just doesn’t always feel that way while you’re in it.

Day to day, life looks fairly ordinary from the outside. School runs. Homework. Grocery shops. Evenings that end later than they probably should because I’m working with clients across time zones, mostly in the U.S. and Australia. 

But underneath that, there’s a constant layer of coordination to keep everything moving across two countries, two systems, and a nine-hour time difference.

It’s not dramatic. It’s just continuous.

I didn’t move to Spain to build a complicated life.

We were already in Europe as a family. My husband’s work had taken us there, and we built a life around that. When his role shifted back to the U.S. and into a new phase of training, I made the decision to stay here with our boys.

It felt right for them. Closer to family, a support network around us, being able to grow up in an environment that, for me, feels calmer and safer. I grew up here, so I knew what that could look like. I believe this is the right place to raise them. I’m just not certain yet what the long-term trade-off looks like. And that uncertainty is the part you have to sit with.

What I’ve found is that when so much of life feels out of your control, you start to focus on the parts that aren’t. Not to fix everything, just to make it more manageable. To bring a bit more structure to something that otherwise feels constantly in motion.

This setup isn’t permanent.

The goal is still the same - to end up in one place, with more flexibility, and less time spent managing the logistics of being apart. But for now, this is the version of life we’re in. And like most things, it works. Just not in the way we originally imagined.