The Ten Seconds That Put an End to My 20-Year Marriage

It’s August in Northern Virginia, sweltering and humid. I still haven’t showered following my early trail run. I’m wearing my stay-at-home mom uniform—oversized Marine Corps sweats, a T-shirt, Crocs flip sandals, and a ponytail. I feel comfortable in this uniform. It doesn’t embrace any portion of my body, helping me to cover my physical shortcomings.

In this uniform I can pretend I’m acceptable, tolerable. It means I accomplished something today; I tried. This style mixed with toilets I scrubbed until they shine delivers the message, “I’m not a lazy pig, I’m valuable. Please keep me.” This uniform is enough to make up for my lack of makeup and flair. It treads the line between disgusting and acceptable.

So far, it’s been enough that my spouse is still eager to initiate sex with me once a month. The kind of sex you have because you need to feel worthwhile. The type that lets him know you need him. Unfulfilling but meaningful.

It’s dinner time, so I’m busy in the kitchen chopping tomatoes and onions on the cutting board that I was taught was to be used exclusively with the extremely expensive Shun knives I received as a Christmas present.

He walks in from the terrace with a plate of sizzling burgers.

My instinct sensed something was off. I pursued because I’m the pursuer. I walked to him, hugged him, stepped back, my hands still on his shoulders, looked in his eyes, and murmured, “Is everything okay? Are we okay?”

I know the solution. I always know the answer. I just didn’t know what it would be this time. Is this one forgivable? Can I patch it up again? It’s like a tire with a creeping leak. You fill it with air, and when it lasts longer than you expect, you just keep driving on it. But finally the tire goes flat, and you’re no longer able to get the automobile to the repair shop. This—we—cannot get to a position of mending.

“I told myself I’d tell you if you asked.”

No. No. Please, no.

“There’s this woman from my past… We reconnected during our family trip to San Diego… I figured she’d shrug me off again… We started talking… She makes me feel alive.”

I could feel the panic overtake my body. I despise this place. It feels so shameful. I know I’ll do anything. I always do anything.

“Is it serious? Please don’t do this. We can repair it. We can make it work. What can I do? How can I make it better? Please let me make things better.”

I beg. I have no pride. I know this about me. He also knows this about me. This is who I am at my core—a desperate woman. A load. I’m ashamed. Scared. Embarrassed. Angry that I let this happen. This is my doing. I designed this. I could be better, but I’m not. I’m a loser, disguised as a winner.

Our marriage was created on terror and then thrived on it for 20 years. When he proposed, he knew this would secure his ailing mother’s last dream—to experience being a grandma in her lifetime. He could ignore his fear of disappointing the lady he’d branded a saint—perfect.

And when I accepted his proposal, our legal contract guaranteed me that I would not give up another kid like I’d done six years previously—this one would become mine. I’d create the family I’d dreamed about for over fifteen years when my dad left me, my mom, and our family without a word. Marrying a Marine would deliver an adventurous, itinerant existence wrapped in a tightly contained bundle of government-backed protection.

Now, nearly two decades later, I’ve worn my marriage and family as a medal around my neck—weighty and shiny. I hide it in my shirt because it’s not pleasant to flaunt your accomplishments, but whenever the opportunity occurs, I swiftly, often self-righteously, pull out that medal and let it shine. But I know the truth about my medal. Every time I pull it out, the shirt scratches a little more of the gold plating off, and my neck is green from the cheap metal underneath. My whole marriage is composed of cheap metal.

I continue to beg. He continues to feel angry and disgusted.

I obsess about the plate of burgers sitting on the counter becoming cold.

This was not the plan. We were going to eat burgers—the burgers that needed the buns I instructed him to grab on his way home from work. The buns he bought with intense resentment because he shouldn’t have to do this. The buns he set on the counter filled him with wrath because, for fuck’s sake, he earns all the money; now he has to do everything at home?

Until recently, I pretended the hatred and bitterness weren’t there. I was pleased to swallow my burger with a heaping of self-hatred.

The plate is still sitting there. Can’t we just eat the goddamn burgers and go back to the business of posing?

We will not eat the burgers.

The winning has ended.