Tonight, we're celebrating our final anniversary.

After 18 years together, this couple went out for a very important dinner.

My husband and I celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary at a fancy restaurant. After he ordered an expensive bottle of wine, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his gift to me. It was a handwritten list of treasured memories from our marriage. Memories, he said, that reminded him of how much we belonged together.

I glowed and held his hand as he read them to me. Some memories I had long forgotten, like the deep embarrassment that accompanied our first and only visit to a nude beach. Others were stories we told over and over because they touched our hearts.

I met Russell a few days after I had decided to move cities, back to my hometown. We had been dating casually for about three weeks. I kept agonising over my decision to leave.

One night, we were returning to his apartment after a date. “I really should move home,” I said. “And it’s too late to change my plans now.” He stopped fiddling with the key and turned to me, exasperated but smiling. “You could keep debating about this, or… you could stay here and be happy with me.”

That sentence ushered in the next 20 years of my life.

My husband folded the list of memories and put it back in his pocket. We had more important things to talk about. Like where each of us was going to live and how we were going to break the news of our pending divorce to our kids.

There was no illicit affair, no drug, alcohol, or sex addiction, no financial troubles, no split-personality disorder and no secrets.  None of the socially acceptable reasons to end what seemed like a perfectly decent marriage.  Which is why some of our friends are finding this new development so hard to accept.

“And so, you’re going to end it. Just like that? As far as I can tell you’re throwing away a really good thing.” This, from a friend who loves me dearly.

“Are you sure you’ve done absolutely everything you can do? I mean, absolutely?” Another good friend.

It had never occurred to me that I would have to justify our separation to our loved ones.

“Honestly, Kris. Your marriage is a dream compared to mine. You don’t know what you’ve got.”

“It couldn’t have been that bad or you wouldn’t have waited so long. What about your children?”

As scenarios like this played out over and over I found myself resenting these questions and the people who asked them. We had read the books. We had seen the therapists. We had taken the vacations strategically designed to rekindle the romance.

“I’m sad because I have been working on my marriage! I’ve been working on it for 18 years and it’s not getting any better!”

I’d had enough. Didn’t it matter that we had grown so distant that we sometimes didn’t speak about anything personal for weeks? When we did dare talk about personal matters, it was always with trepidation.

“Well, I think you are courageous,” a girlfriend told me over drinks. “You are making a decision that many of us would like to make but are too afraid to even consider.”

Like 20 years before, a single sentence changed everything. Our normally loving and caring friends weren’t demanding explanations. They were asking for reassurance. They felt blind-sided. We seemed so happy. Yet, we did our best and our foundation still broke apart under our feet. Could the important things in their lives crumble too?

The list of memories that Russell gave to me for our anniversary was bittersweet. It was full of loving, tender, and funny moments.

The problem was, except for two notable exceptions, when our daughters came into our lives, every single memory that reminded Russell of why we belonged together, was from the first two years of our 20-year relationship.

This post originally appeared here, and has been republished with full permission.

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