The Moment I Realized My Marriage Was Over

In that moment, I knew we couldn't be saved.

Morning came sooner than I wanted.

In many ways, I didn’t want it to come at all. Because with daylight came consciousness, and with consciousness came reality.

I’d do anything to avoid my reality.

It’s why I took two, three, or even four naps a day. I wanted to shield myself from reality. From consciousness.

My therapist said depression often brought with it the desire to nap. To sleep. To run from the present. If depression meant I could avoid looking down the barrel of harsh decisions coming my way, I’d gladly accept the diagnosis.

Another night on the couch. I’d lost track of how often I slept on living room furniture. It would be easier to count the days I’d slept in bed.

In bed with my wife.

She hadn’t banished me to the sofa. I willingly excommunicated myself from the bedroom. The blue glow of television was more warming than whatever heat she gave.

Stairs creaked as my wife walked down them to me. It was time to wake up. Time to face reality.

Life Is But A Play

The night before we went out with friends.

Another night pretending we weren’t falling apart.

Another night lying to those around us. Another night lying to ourselves. But we couldn’t sit inside. We couldn’t spend hours alone, just the two of us. Because then we might be forced to talk. To face our joint reality.

As always, the night started well. We laughed and joked with friends. We played games. We put on a show for anyone watching, but behind the curtain of our performance, I could feel the strain. Day after day, night after night, stepping into the role of loving husband that had once been so natural. The role of a lifetime.

I didn’t know how much more I could take before I walked off stage.

As the night wore on and friends went their separate ways, my wife and I were left alone. We could act for an audience, but we couldn’t perform for each other. I think, in a way, we were relieved to take off the masks. To exchange smiles for pressed lips and laughter for snapping sarcasm.

The two of us ended up at an after-hour burrito joint. It’s where the night took its final turn.

The Morning Of

My wife didn’t comment about my sleeping on the sofa again. When we arrived home the night before, neither of us spoke. She went upstairs. I remained behind.

Now, the morning after, she avoided eye contact as she approached me. I didn’t seek it out. She sat next to me on the sofa. We didn’t touch. She didn’t reach for my knee. I didn’t wrap my arm around her shoulder.

“About last night,” she said.

“Yeah, about last night.”

Neither of us wanted to continue. Because what else was there to say? I searched for something, but nothing came. My heart beat just enough to keep me breathing. Even it was tired. Tired of the games. Tired of the fake life it supported. Tired of the phantom relationship I wanted to believe I had.

Our gray reflection in the television screen looked back at us. On the screen, a trapped, unhappy couple quickly becoming more strangers than lovers.

“You want to get breakfast?” I asked.

Another distraction.

It’s all I could think of.

About Last Night

We sat in the after-hours restaurant. I hadn’t ordered anything. My stomach couldn’t handle it. She nibbled at an unraveling burrito. A strip of tortilla pulled away like loose flesh, spilling rice and beans onto her hand. She wiped away debris from her wedding ring.

“I really should take this off when I eat,” she said.

“Like you took it off when you fucked him?”

I shouldn’t have said it, thought part of my brain. The other half wanted to yell it. Why was it my responsibility to keep quiet? Why did it feel like I was the only one making an effort? The day I found out, part of my brain said to stay, the other to leave. I had a way of listening to the wrong side. She set her food down.

“If you know what’s best for the ring, why don’t you take it?” she said, slipping it off and setting it on the table.

The ring, that ring, the thing that gave me so much joy picking out, now mocked me. It laughed at what I’d become. At what we’d become. We weren’t worthy of it. I hated it.

I grabbed it and flung it against the side wall. Rage boiled in me. It fueled my action. And yet I wanted to collapse in tears. To allow the weight of our world to buckle me to my knees. To stain the ground in what dripped from my eyes. I needed it to be over.

I’d battled and fought for so long. After learning of her infidelity, I didn’t want to let her go. Maybe because I really did love her. Maybe because I knew some of my actions had pushed her in that direction, and I didn’t want to share in the burden. Share in the fault. So I fought for us. I fought my emotions and my mind. I fought reality. A lone knight on the battlefield, I did what I could. I swung with what strength I had left, even as I felt deep blades slicing through my soul. Blow after blow, I tried to get up. I tried to fight. I tried to survive, but I no longer could. I collapsed on top of the foes I’d vanquished, yet surrounded by those I couldn’t defeat. What life remained of our relationship quickly bled out.

The ring clanged and spun out under a booth. She got up and retrieved it.

Breakfast

We drove to a little Greek diner. It had a gyro breakfast skillet we both liked.

Neither of us talked on the drive over. It wasn’t a short drive.

Sitting in the overstuffed booth, I watched her flip through the menu, despite seeing it a hundred times over and already knowing what she wanted. We both had ways to distract.

Ring polished and casting sparkled reflection with every page flip, one would never guess it had spent time on the floor of a late-night burrito joint.

I looked at her eyes, and that’s when I felt it.

Nothing.

I didn’t feel pain. I didn’t feel rage. I didn’t feel like rocking myself to sleep. I didn’t feel love, I didn’t feel friendship. I felt nothing looking at her. While many of those emotions still existed and would show themselves in the days and months that followed, the lack of connection at that moment told me everything I needed to know.

That we were over. That we could not be saved. That the final performance of our short-lived act had come to an end.

For a time, I searched for a feeling. My brain panned and sifted for any emotion at all, but unlike the gold I’d found when first connecting with my wife, I now came up empty. Perhaps what I’d found initially had been fool's gold anyway.

The last breaths of the dying knight left his lungs as he looked to the sky, the relationship twisting away from his soul as his heart stilled.

My wife looked up and saw my eyes on hers. She waited.

“About last night,” I said.

About last night.