Tenure denial, from the spouse's point of view

I've been a longtime reader of Daniel Drezner, a professor of international relations at Tufts University. He was rejected for tenure at the University of Chicago; he and his wife write an essay 5 years after his denial. It's naturally fairly bittersweet, but I am a bit surprised at the somewhat vehement comment about Chicago his wife makes:

Things turned out well for us. We were lucky—my husband found a job, with tenure, and we moved to Boston, which just happens to be my favorite city. Our kids were young enough to move without much difficulty. I know that other people have had it a lot harder. They've struggled to find work, relocated to less desirable places, and have painfully disrupted family life. This is particularly difficult for couples in which both are academics. Those of us in more "portable" careers should be grateful to have avoided the two-body problem. 

By the time we left Chicago, almost nine months after my husband's tenure decision, I was ready to leave Hyde Park behind and never look back. Whatever love I had for the place and for the university was gone. I have no nostalgia for the time we lived there. I am glad I no longer live in Chicago. I am happier here in Boston. And because of that, I look at the tenure episode as a hard time we had to endure to get to a better place. And it may be the same for any spouse or partner. Once you have unpacked, settled in, found yourself a good book group, a gym, a place to get coffee, once the kids are back in school and have made friends, once the new place feels like home, you may think, "This is better." A lot of the hurt will have subsided.

Denial of tenure in the chemistry world seems to be relatively rare -- that being said, it certainly hurts just as much (I would assume, since I've never attempted to be a professor.) I assume that it hurts the spouse as well, but for different reasons.

I imagine that spouses of laid-off pharma workers may feel the same way about Groton or Rahway or Pearl River, although I assume that the hurt of a tenure denial and the hurt of a layoff are a little bit different (in that tenure denial is typically made by people who you actually know, as is mentioned in the article.)

Best wishes to all of us.