The ring cycle

The end of my marriage came suddenly and without an apparent warning. Two weeks after we’d moved into our new home, the home we’d fought for months to get, my wife and I stood looking at each other in our new kitchen, both apologizing.

It was over.

The timing could have been better.

The gross details of what happened and how it happened will be omitted, but in the weeks following, I read a lot of books. I always read a lot of books and one of the things that caught my attention was an explanation that most marriages end because the relationship erodes over time. Neither party means for it to happen. It’s quiet, like tooth decay, and only becomes apparent when the outer enamel cracks open. After that, you have agony and extraction is really your only recourse.

I can say there weren’t a lot of accusations. There wasn’t much of a struggle once the nature of the situation was revealed. All we had was grief and the hope that we could both work beyond the pain and move on.

And this is where I am. This is why the blog posts have come to a slow halt. It’s been an eventful summer. My birthday was okay. I got a new house. I lost my wife.

Over the years, I’ve followed blogs that have touched on relationships that have failed. Some of them got pretty scary. Others wallowed in their grief or accused or condemned. A few tried to put on a brave face, but you could smell the bitterness over the saccharin.

I don’t want to do any of that.

I am, however, starting over and working through a process in the only way that makes sense to me. I don’t know what anything means right now. There is a lot to work though. I have new things to figure out and yes, I’ve been through this before, but it’s different this time.