By the time 2017 rolled around, we’d been home for about a year.
The novelty of returning had long since worn off. Whatever lingering excitement there had been about unpacking our lives after twelve months abroad had quietly been replaced by something much less memorable—which is probably why I remember so little about that year.
If I’m honest, 2016 exists in my memory more as a feeling than a collection of events. We came home, went back to work, settled into routines, and before long it felt as though our year away had folded itself neatly into the story of our lives. We talked about it often, of course, but we didn’t really live any differently because of it. We were perhaps a little more appreciative of experiences than things, a little quicker to book another trip, but for the most part we resumed the life we’d left behind.
By 2017, that life had become normal again.
Our life wasn’t different, not really. But we were – our relationship was .
I don’t remember there ever being a conversation where either of us acknowledged it. We certainly never sat down and said, “We’re starting to feel more like roommates than husband and wife.”
Then again, that would have required us to actually have a conversation about something uncomfortable, and if you’ve been reading along, you already know that wasn’t exactly our specialty.
Like so many things in our marriage, it simply became the new normal without either of us ever saying it out loud.
It happened so gradually that by the time I noticed it, we’d already been living there for quite a while.
The strange thing is, I don’t think I would have told you I was unhappy, and if you’d asked me then, I probably would have said things were fine.
And that’s exactly what made it so dangerous.
Because what I was calling “fine” was probably much closer to resignation. I quietly adapted to the relationship we had instead of asking myself whether it was still the relationship either of us wanted.
Somewhere along the line I’d stopped expecting very much from our marriage beyond what it had become, and because nothing felt particularly bad, neither of us seemed to question it.
Around that same time, I decided to enroll in yoga teacher training.
On the surface, it was a pretty simple decision. I’d already become part of the community at my yoga studio. I loved my teachers, I loved the people I’d met there, and spending an evening on my mat had quietly become my favorite part of the day. Teacher training felt like the natural next step—not because I had some grand vision of teaching yoga, but because I wanted to be more deeply connected to something that had unexpectedly become important to me.
At the time, that’s all I thought it was.
I wasn’t looking for myself.
I wasn’t searching for healing.
I certainly wasn’t setting out on some spiritual journey.
I just knew that every time I walked into that studio, I felt a little lighter than when I’d walked in.
So I signed up.
From April through July, my evenings belonged to yoga. Saturdays disappeared into anatomy lectures, philosophy discussions, meditation, breathwork, and more Sanskrit than I ever thought I’d learn. My life became work during the day and yoga at night
It felt full.
Purposeful, even.
Looking back, I can see why that season became such an important chapter in my life, but I try to be careful not to give that version of myself too much credit. At the time, I wasn’t thinking, Something profound is happening here. I was simply following something that made me feel good without needing to understand why.
At the very same time, I was planning another trip to Italy.
Planning trips had always been my happy place. Give me a map, a train schedule, and entirely too many browser tabs, and I could happily disappear for hours. This trip felt especially exciting because my parents were coming with us.
They loved Mike.
I mean really loved him.
I used to tease them that they liked him more than me, and honestly there were days I wasn’t entirely convinced it wasn’t true.
My dad loved golfing with him. My mom loved cooking with him. They loved his quietness, his steadiness, the fact that he never needed to be the loudest person in the room to make people feel taken care of. Watching the three of them together always made me happy because there was never any pretending. They genuinely enjoyed each other.
Looking back, it would be easy to tell this story as though I buried myself in yoga teacher training and planning another trip to Italy because my marriage was quietly falling apart.
The truth is, I don’t think I was nearly that self-aware.
I wasn’t intentionally looking for distractions, and I certainly wasn’t waking up each morning thinking, If I can just keep myself busy enough, maybe I won’t have to think about what’s happening at home. It didn’t feel like avoidance because, at least from where I was standing, there wasn’t anything obvious to avoid.
Life just… kept moving.
Work became work. Yoga became something I genuinely looked forward to. Italy became the next adventure to plan. My marriage simply existed alongside all of it, woven into the fabric of my everyday life the same way it had been for the previous nine years.
And because nothing felt catastrophic, I never stopped to ask myself whether anything underneath it all was slowly coming undone.
So when August finally arrived and we got ready to leave for Italy I wasn’t hoping the trip would save our marriage because, honestly, I didn’t think our marriage needed saving.
I think that’s the part that’s the hardest to explain.
People hear “divorce” and naturally assume there must have been months leading up to it where I was questioning everything. That I was lying awake wondering whether we’d make it. That I was searching for signs we were finding our way back to each other, or quietly preparing myself for what was coming.
But I wasn’t.
I really wasn’t.
Our marriage wasn’t front and center in my mind the way it probably seems like it should have been. I wasn’t constantly evaluating it or taking inventory of how we were doing. We were just… living. Going to work. Making plans. Talking about where we’d travel next. Building a life that, from the outside and even from much of the inside, still looked very much like our life.
That’s what resignation does.
It doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t ask you to make a decision. It simply convinces you that this is how things are now, and after a while you stop questioning it altogether.
Italy was simple. It was simply our next trip. Another adventure. Another chance to get away from work for a couple of weeks and do the thing we’d always loved doing most.
And that’s exactly what it was.
Away from work schedules and laundry and dishes and all the tiny obligations that quietly fill a life, we simply enjoyed being together again. I was busy making sure my parents had the trip I’d imagined for them, which turned out to be one of my favorite parts of the whole vacation. Watching my dad confidently butcher the Italian language, watching my mom stand speechless inside churches she’d only seen in photographs, watching the two of them fall in love with the country all over again—it made all those months of planning worth it.
Mike and I laughed.
We held hands.
We made love.
None of it struck me as unusual.
It wasn’t some cinematic reconciliation.
It didn’t feel symbolic.
It simply felt like another really good trip.
On our last day in Rome we were wandering near the Trevi Fountain when Mike ducked into a little jewelry shop. I remember standing outside thinking, Please don’t come out with some ridiculously overpriced tourist souvenir.
Instead, he walked out holding a tiny paper bag.
“My ring,” he said.
His wedding band hadn’t fit for quite a while, and he hadn’t been wearing it. I had noticed, of course, but I honestly don’t remember ever asking him to replace it. If anything, I probably would have told him we didn’t need to spend the money.
He reached into the bag and pulled out a simple silver band. It wasn’t flashy. It looked remarkably similar to the one he’d worn for years.
I remember smiling because he’d done it completely on his own.
There hadn’t been a conversation.
I hadn’t hinted.
Somewhere between wandering through Rome and throwing coins into the Trevi Fountain, he’d decided it mattered enough to buy himself another wedding ring.
At the time, I thought it was one of the sweetest things he’d done in a long while.
If you’d asked me as we were making our way through the airport the next morning how I thought the trip had gone, I would’ve told you it was wonderful. My parents had the vacation they’d dreamed about for years. Mike and I had laughed more than we had in a long time. I boarded the plane believing we were simply returning home after another memorable adventure together.
It wasn’t until a few months later that my mom told me about something I’d completely missed.
I never heard it myself. My mom told me about it afterward, and to this day she remembers it with remarkable clarity.
As we were saying our goodbyes and heading toward separate gates, she and my dad each pulled Mike into a hug.
“Thank you,” they told him.
“Thank you for taking such good care of us.”
At the time, it was exactly what it sounded like. Two grateful parents thanking the man they loved like a son for helping make their trip so special. There was nothing unusual about it. My parents adored Mike, and he adored them right back. It was simply a beautiful way to end two wonderful weeks together.
It wasn’t until later that those words became almost unbearable to hear.
Because that was the last conversation my parents would ever have with him.
Eighteen days later- Mike would ask me for a divorce.
–A
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