Reset

The most difficult thing about marriage is the occasional, inexplicable disconnect; the distance that moves in from nowhere, like a dense, cold fog.

We sail side by side, riding the same wave. But in a blink the affection and humor and empathy and cooperation we shared moments ago disappear. We chafe and clash. We irritate then criticize then hurt then anger each other.

Qualities we’d once admired become nails scraping the paint off a car: his slow and thoughtful conversation sounds muddled and plodding; my valued emotional radar turns him into a hunted duck; his good-natured teasing feels malicious; my need for constant closeness, a strip of toilet paper stuck to his heel.

Traits we rarely notice in each other become flaws we can’t forgive:  his chewing and snoring, my anxiety and insomnia; his insistence on dressing an entire salad, mine on counting calories; his need to read half a New Yorker during each trip to the bathroom, mine on saving money by keeping the house dim and cool; the whisker trimmings he leaves in the sink, the sweaty work-out clothes I leave in the hamper.

We should retreat to our corners, but we can’t disentangle; we’re inextricably entwined but we’re estranged. And we can’t right it. We grow impatient and disappointed and distraught.

So we watch a movie. Focus on something outside ourselves. No demands. No expectations. No talking. Just breathing. Separate and together. Recalibrating.

It doesn't vanish, the love. But sometimes it gets caught in the lint trap. It's taken 20 years to know this. Knowing this is what gets us through.

Gradually, our feet touch, then our elbows. In time, one asks the other for a piece of blanket, and we warm, together.