When the Scaffolding Comes Down, You Find Out What You Built
Surviving the middle years isn’t the same as building something worth keeping.
The Marker
The southernmost point in the continental United States. A big painted buoy at the edge of the island. 90 miles to Cuba on one side. Open ocean on the other.
We waited our turn. Got the photo.
And I stood there thinking: we almost didn’t make it here.
Not to Key West.
To this.
Whatever this is.
Two people who still want to be in the same place at the same time.
Sometimes the destination is not the place. It is the relationship that survived long enough to reach it.
We left on a Friday in November. Camper hitched. Key West the destination.
Jekyll Island on the way down. Two nights. Then on to Key West. Tybee Island on the way back. Two nights.
We had beach cruisers in the back of the truck. We had a list. The Green Parrot. Duval Street. Hemingway House. We’d ride the bikes everywhere, kayak in the morning, rent a golf cart, get out to Dry Tortugas National Park, watch the sunset every night from the water.
It looked like a trip. It was something else.
The Hard Middle
Nobody tells you what the middle years of a marriage actually cost.
Not the wedding industry. Not the Instagram version of family life. Not the people who frame every season of raising kids as a gift you should be grateful for.
The middle years are hard. Genuinely hard.
You are managing a household, two careers, soccer, softball, Girl Scouts, karate, parents who are starting to need things too.
You are tired in a way that sleep doesn’t fix.
You are running on obligation and habit and the faint memory of who you were before all of it started.
And somewhere in there, the person you married becomes your co-manager.
You are not enemies. You are not broken.
You are just running the operation together and hoping there’s something left over at the end of the day.
There usually isn’t.
Some marriages do not explode. They slowly become administrative.
My wife and I went through that season. Long stretch of it.
We were not headed off a cliff. But there were years where we were more business partners than anything else.
Two people keeping the lights on and the kids fed and the calendar moving.
We made it through.
Not because we had some breakthrough moment. Not because we read the right book or went to the right counselor.
We made it through because we kept showing up.
Both of us.
Even when showing up was all we had.
When the House Went Quiet
Our daughter graduated high school and moved out.
The house went quiet.
And we looked at each other and actually wondered: what do we do now?
That moment can go two ways.
You either realize you’ve been running so hard you forgot to stay connected.
Or you realize the connection was always there, just buried under everything else.
We got lucky. It was the second one.
Took us a beat to find our footing.
But we found it.
Quiet can expose damage. Quiet can also expose strength.
The First Yes
The first big trip was San Francisco. 2009.
We checked into the hotel and the guy at the front desk asked if we wanted to upgrade.
I said no. Immediately. Out of habit.
Then I stopped.
What do you get with the upgrade?
Late checkout. Two Starbucks vouchers every morning. Room on the 37th floor with a view of both the Bay and the city.
He told me the price.
My right eye twitched.
I quickly did some mental math.
Having my daughter absent is like getting a 33% trip discount, I thought.
I looked over at my wife.
She smiled.
I turned back and said yes.
If you knew me then, you would know that was completely out of character.
I was the frugal guy. Two kids in tow. Always doing things on the cheap.
Dad packed a cooler and found a park to grill burgers and brats.
I had never paid to upgrade anything.
She knew what that yes meant before I did.
San Francisco became one of our best memories.
We had a blast.
And somewhere in that trip we realized we still had it.
Twelve years later we were hitching the camper and heading south.
Choosing Each Other Again
The Key West trip was not a reward.
Yes, it was on the list. But the trip meant more than checking a box.
It was two people who had figured out how to choose each other again, doing what they do now.
Leave on a Friday in November.
Camp at Jekyll Island on the way down.
Ride bikes through the streets of a small island.
Kayak in the morning when it’s still cool.
Watch the sun go down over the water every single night.
Find the southernmost point and stand there together.
That’s the thing nobody tells you about getting through the hard middle of a marriage.
The other side is real.
Not perfect. We still argue. We still disagree. We are not a highlight reel.
But we know how to get through the disagreements now.
We’ve earned that.
Thirty-one years of it.
Love is not proven by never struggling. It is proven by learning how to stay human inside the struggle.
And the reward isn’t a destination.
It’s the Friday afternoon when you hitch the camper and head south with the person you chose, thinking:
we actually built something here.
If you know someone grinding through their own hard middle, send this their way.
What Was Still Standing
Reinvention is not just what you do with your career.
Sometimes it’s what you do with your marriage.
The same principles apply.
Survive the hard middle without quitting.
Keep showing up when the return isn’t obvious.
Be willing to rebuild what eroded instead of writing it off.
Most people treat the empty nest as an ending.
It isn’t.
It’s the moment the scaffolding comes down.
What you built is still standing. Or it isn’t.
You find out when the kids leave.
We found out we’d built something worth keeping.
The photo from that marker is on my phone.
My wife and I. Southernmost point. Ocean behind us. Somewhere in the middle of a November afternoon in 2021.
We look relaxed.
We look like people who have stopped running.
We look like people who made it somewhere that mattered.
90 miles to Cuba. End of the road.
Nowhere left to go but back into the life you built.
We took our time getting back.
Pressure can hold things together. Peace tells the truth.
The Real Question
When the pressure lifts and the scaffolding comes down, what will you find still standing?
CTRL is not about the destination.
It is about who you are still choosing when the hard middle is over.
Not the life you were managing.
The life you built.
CTRL: R
If this was worth your time, three ways to say so.
Forward it to someone still grinding through their own hard middle.
Tell me where you are in yours.
Wednesday in the Vault, we go deeper on the hard middle.
Not just in marriage. In every reinvention worth having.
What it costs.
What gets you through it.
How you know when you are finally on the other side.
The Hard Middle.
That is what we are opening up next.
Thanks for reading.
~ JP
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CTRL Signals by JP Bristol
Clarity. Tenacity. Reinvention. Legacy
This. When the scaffolding comes down and you find out what you built.