A friend sent me an article that I needed to read. It is called The Year My Marriage Almost Broke, and it chronicles both the decade in which she and her husband nailed this marriage gig, and the cascading free fall that came next. They were the couple everyone loved to be with. Fun. Funny. Quick to give helpful advice. Self congratulatory for their well earned success. Then she describes how two people who are still laughing and trusting one another can unravel into selfish idiots. Her words, not mine. 

The circumstances are important, in that he accepted a job with more travel. Which meant less time together. But in another sense the details are irrelevant. You can be a jerk under any stripes. Sleeping in the same room. Raising the same kids. With a full bank account. Driving the same mini van. But I will grant that when one of you is flying first class and having shirts picked up by the concierge, while the other is wiping banana off a high chair and folding laundry, inequity is divisive. Unless you decide that it isn't. 

One of the transformations that happened for them was the shift from smugness in their own stellar relationship, to the harsh realization that no one is immune to breakdown. Perhaps because they had it in the bag they had no back up plan. Since they could not afford to divorce they stayed. And that left a space, albeit small, for incremental change. First she unloaded a barrel of resentment on him, ending with the kicker that she had no expectations of him which meant he could not disappoint her. Then, for some reason, he was a little nice. Which in contrast to her her own brash behavior made her sad. Which edged out the impulse to be angry. Making an ever so small cavity for compassion to slip in.  

She ended the piece by saying that they no longer give advice. But I am glad she shared their story.