You Didn’t Marry The District; You Married Your Person

The late-night grading. The careful tiptoeing from a partner who just wants you to rest. The belief that you’re the only one who can help. If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone—and you’re not broken. We go straight at the quiet heartbreak of giving your best energy to a job that forgets you by Monday while your family learns to live with the leftovers.

We talk about ego disguised as duty, the savior story many educators are handed, and what it looks like from the other side of the bed when someone loves you through burnout. You’ll hear practical language for saying no to extra emotional labor without abandoning students, and simple micro-resets you can use to shift from survival mode back into presence. We challenge the “only I can handle this” myth, unpack why boundaries are an act of care, and name the difference between living your values and merely surviving them.

Most of all, we invite you to choose the people you actually married over the system you never did. Presence at home can be its own quiet rebellion: a 30-minute window with devices away, a curious question for your partner, a pause before you rescue yet another crisis. If your heart is tired and your house feels like a staging area for your job, this conversation offers new scripts, fresh courage, and a way back to connection. Subscribe, share this with a teacher bestie who needs it, and leave a review with one boundary you plan to hold this week—your future self will thank you.

Thanks for listening!

Connect with me on instagram: @theburnedoutb

I'd love for you to message me what you thought, what it made you think about, your reflections, and of course I want to know what's been coming up for you in the classroom! I will never name names...unless you ask me to!

Chapters

• 0:00 Tempo: 120.0

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:09

Welcome to the Burned Out Bean, dear teachers, the podcast for educators who are two seconds away from flipping a desk, but still somehow remember to take attendance. Or maybe even. I'm Nicole, the Burned Out Fiend, who's a former classroom teacher, curriculum builder, introductor of both deaths, and professional wearer of the I'm fine mask. Around here, we say the quiet parts out loud. We call out the systems that run on guilt, glitter, and unpaid labor. And we absolutely do not accept toxic positivity as a wellness plan. Grab your lukewarm coffee, lock your classroom door, and take a breath. You're home. The podcast for educators who have given everything to their students and are realizing that the people at home are getting what's left over. Today we're getting personal because there's a quiet heartbreak that no one prepares you for. And definitely nobody else will do it like I would do it. And sometimes that was true. But also sometimes that was ego disguised as duty. Sometimes that was my fear talking, but it showed up wearing a cape. So it felt like a hero thing. And it wasn't, you know, one moment, but several small moments that became a routine that finally cracked me open. So you know that feeling, it's like a defensiveness that just kind of rises up when your spouse sighs after you open your laptop again at 9 30 p.m. It's that internal voice that says, he doesn't understand what this job demands of me. He doesn't understand what I'm carrying, he doesn't understand my mental load. He doesn't understand that if I don't finish this, somebody else is going to be waiting on me or they're not gonna get what they need. Well, one, like, who are you to say what they need? You know what you would like to provide. And if all things were optimal, like this would be the solution, right? Like that doesn't mean that you have to do that in that moment. You're telling yourself you do, but that was me too. Except he actually really did understand, he just saw it from a different angle. He saw me come home physically and mentally exhausted and then sit down to work again. He saw me worrying over things that I couldn't control, but that I thought that I should be able to, because that's what I had been conditioned for. He saw me with heavy, heavy bags under my eyes that didn't go away. And he saw himself walking on eggshells trying to make everything just so that he could shepherd me from dinner to bed to sleep without interruption, without any one little thing that might knock me off of, you know, whatever modicum of good mood that I could be in. He remembers lying so still in bed, trying not to move because every minute of my rest counted. He remembers how fragile I was. Like he would make sure that the toilet paper was facing the right way, like because that was the level of control that he felt he needed to have to keep me upright, not even having a good time, just upright. That wasn't just exhaustion. That was me holding myself together and not even seeing the people around me who were also trying to hold me together. Does your spouse, you know, not understand the demands of you? Do they bulk at the times when you have to stay late or give extra support or the amount of time that you spend at home grading, planning, worrying? If you're anything like I was, I balked at his bulking. I wished that he would just understand that like I was on a mission and that if I didn't do it, nobody would. Or they wouldn't do it good enough. Nobody could do it like me. No one else had relationships with these kids like I had relationships with these kids, or the kids wouldn't listen to someone else. I was speaking with a teacher friend who was recounting how she was the only one that a certain student would listen to, and how much weight that that was to bear, being the only one who could possibly get through. She ended up being the one that others would run to about this student, who, by the way, had like six classes in the day, and zero of them were hers. It's okay to be like that safe adult for a student, but we do it's not okay to be the babysitter. Like that is not the job. And by the way, that's not going to allow that person to grow into somebody who can handle themselves. She ended up being essentially like this full-time babysitter helping other teachers deal with this student, which by the way, like it didn't work. Like this ended up being another big runaround from someone who didn't want to do anything. I have my own common experiences. You know, my administrator coming to me and saying, Hey, we're gonna go ahead and put this kid in your class because we know that you can form a relationship with them, we know that you can handle them. Code for like nobody else can deal with this kid. So I'm giving them to you, and they are your problem now. And by the way, do it with a smile and be kind, you know, to them so that they'll like you because we are counting on this, nobody else can do it. We have a sickness where we think that if we say no to admin, that we're saying no to a kid, you know, and especially if we're parents, we just think about that little life. And we're not saying no to the kid, we're saying you need to go find another solution. But honestly, is it that bad to say no to a kid? Is it that bad that you know somebody learns how to manage disappointment appropriately? I digress. In this whole time where my husband was really just trying to make everything work around me so that I could get home and go to bed and hopefully get some sleep. I wasn't sleeping. I was temporarily shutting down between panic attacks, between crises. And from my perspective, I was strong. I was showing up, I was doing the work, I was saving the kids, or at least saving today's assignment. From his perspective, I was breaking a little bit more every day. He tried to make literally everything easier for me because I didn't have the capacity for one more decision, and I certainly didn't have the capacity to see what he was doing and how he was being there for me. And I resented him because that resentment felt safer than admitting how far gone I was. Sometimes our spouses don't understand because they can't, they truly can't, they don't live inside the noise, the chaos, the thousand decisions before 10 a.m. But also, maybe that's not their job. Maybe our spouses aren't supposed to understand every ounce of our pain. Maybe they're supposed to remind us what peace looks like. Because while I was knee deep in crisis management, trauma bonding with my teacher, besties, and convincing myself that it was noble to sacrifice everything, he was trying to remind me that there was life outside the classroom door, that there was us, that there were kids at home, our kids who needed a mom and not a martyr. My best friend calls my kids my blood children because, like, you know, there's you know, we call our students our kids, those are my kids. My blood children needed me to be present and not physically present because I did that a lot, and that is something that I'm not proud of. I was physically present, I wasn't present in that moment with them, and the truth is that he wasn't my enemy for all of my resentment, he wasn't my enemy, he was the only one waving a flag and saying, Hey, do you remember you? Here's what I've learned is that when you're in survival mode for long enough, love starts to sound like criticism when your spouse says you're never really here, you hear you're failing. I heard that, and like my response to that was a knee-jerk reaction of like, oh, I'll just do more, I'll just do more while I'm home, like I'll get more closets cleaned out, I'll clean more. That is so whacked. Because what they're actually saying is, I miss you. My family was living with a ghost that graded papers and didn't even like grading papers. Like, who likes grading papers, by the way? Gross. You can't keep giving your best energy to a job that forgets you by Monday and expect your marriage to thrive on the leftovers. You didn't marry your district, you married your person, the one that knew you before the Sunday scaries. So tonight, maybe just stop, put down your pen, look up, and remember that being fully present in your home is its own kind of rebellion. And what I'll tell you about when I started to look up and be fully present with my family is that I fell in love again with all of them, with my kids and my husband, and that's what I want more of. That's what I chose. I didn't choose a system that was gonna chew me up and spit me out, but once acknowledging that, if I stayed in that situation, that was on me. And what I would tell you if you love your family like I know you do, like I love my family, when you lift your head up out of the fog and you stop saying yes to everything, you stop saying yes to everything you feel obligated for, you're gonna want more of that. You're gonna want so much more of that. Because your own family and your blood children are the why. You can love your students and love your family, but if one is keeping you from showing up for the other, then something's out of balance if you zoomed out and watched your own life from above, what would you see? And I'm not a fan of making judgments. In fact, I work with all my students on on non-judgment specifically of themselves, but what judgments would you make about that person and how they were displaying the values that they profess? Do you think that they match up? Are they in alignment or are they out of alignment? Would you see somebody living her values? Or would you see her surviving her values? Because there is a difference. Burnout isn't about how much you care, it's about caring so much for everyone else that you forget the people who care for you. And you, I'm willing to bet, are probably not caring for yourself. And if you are in that situation, I really do want you to contact me at the burned out B. That's the letter B. Because in the month of November, we're in the month of October now, in the month of November, I am running a free workshop for mamas, teacher mamas included. And it is all about taking a little bit of time back for ourselves. It's about rediscovering what makes you unique and what lights you up so that you can bring more of that back to your life. It's about rediscovering mindfulness and presence in the moment. I didn't know how to do that. That is something that I have had to learn. So I'm willing to bet that maybe you could use a few strategies too. And I will include dads. Yeah, if you're a dad, you could definitely come to this. And maybe tonight give your best energy to those that you love the most. Take a different look at them. When I started to take a different look at my resentment and a different look at my husband, I know I said I refell in love, but I also started to see a more relaxed and carefree person, the one that I fell in love with, and I actually have started to see a lot more of his inner child come out. And y'all, that is a joy, and that is something that I want for you. I want you to be present enough to see that in your partner. Until next time, peace. Thanks for listening to the burned out bee, dear teachers. If it hit you in the soul or in the sarcasm gland, send it to your teacher bestie. You know the one. Follow the show, smash that subscribe button like it's a broken copy machine, and come hang out on Instagram at the burned out bee, where the real talk continues. And remember, you weren't meant to be a martyr with a lanyard. You were meant to rise. See you next time, B.