Reply to Advice on moving away from the city but still commuting?

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[quote=Anonymous]I live in Bristow, and I personally could not do the commute on a long-term basis unless I had a spouse who did not work (and even then it would still be hard). I commuted from here to Falls Church for a long time, and even that was soul-crushing at times, depending on traffic and it was just outside the Beltway. It was NEVER shorter than 45 minutes and took up to an hour and a half or even, once when there was a bad accident, two hours. I was so frustrated I wanted to cry.

I have also done the commute from out here to DC, and even on the train it SUCKED. I commuted from Manassas Park (lived less than 5 min from the VRE stop there) but had to take metro and then bus or walk to the office. It was 1.5 hours each way. I ended up getting asked to leave a job because I had no flexibility to stay later because of picking up a child from day care and how early I had to leave the office to make the train to pick him up by 6:30. And then train delays could make me late even still. It is a serious commute. From Bristow, I took one (temp) job in DC for two months and granted I was 5 months pregnant at the time but damn, it near about killed me by the end of it. I got up at 5:30, left the house at 6, drove to Vienna metro, took the metro in, and since we had to take a total of one hour of breaks during the day, I could not even work a full 8 hours or I couldn't be on time to pick up my kids by 6 p.m.  And OMG, the stress of trying to time everything right so that I wasn't late to pick them up! The absolute helplessness and frustration and at times rage you feel when traffic is backed up or there is a Metro delay that is going to make you late ... never again. I am now a SAHM, my DH works in Leesburg (which is a north-south commute on a not very heavily trafficked road, so not that bad). That's the only reason we can live here.

Now, that having been said about the commute, suburbia agrees with me just fine. It is much less densely populated out here than Alexandria, DC, Arlington, even Fairfax County. I am 3 minutes away from horse farms and cornfields, and I LOVE that. Yeah, big box stores, cookie cutter cheap new construction planned communities, etc., but the breathing room is key for me. I can run errands on the weekends without insane traffic. Any chance of getting jobs somewhere in NoVa? If not, I would say stay put. The commute is killer over time, even on the train, because of the feeling of being away from your kids and spouse so much. There are only so many books you can read (and I did enjoy that for a while) before you realize you'd rather be with your family.[/quote]

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