And so I write. I took a ten mile bike ride to get to the sunset. I watched it, I loved it, I simply stood and appreciated it. I wouldn’t have done that if someone hadn’t reminded me of how important it is to watch sunsets.

I broke the hearts of my daughters tonight, but in so doing, I freed my own. As we sat at the table, a family of four, shared food prepared together, laughed and joked together, it must have seemed strange to the young souls that we should say we wanted to be married no longer. We smiled, we told stories of our courtship, we listened to each other and to them. It was, in fact, an ideal family dinner, save one thing; the message that it was over. My oldest said, “I don’t want you to divorce, it would be better if we all lived here.” The youngest said, “We’re not going to be one of those families were you guys can’t stand to be in a room together and you hate each other, right?” I tried, in vain, to express the fact that we were now, in this time of our lives, much happier being friends than being husband and wife. To children, marriage should be about two people being best friends. It can’t make sense to them that we were ever anything but friends. This is what can’t be explained until a person has loved another, cared for another, and sacrificed for another. The roles of husband and wife are very different from Mother and Father or friend and friend. To be a spouse is to be symbiotic, to be capable of existing as one and then in an instant be individual again. To pass seamlessly from partner to individual, and be supported in those hairpin turns, and be accepting when you see them I your partner. We had lost interest in the individuals who made the pair, and the pair was chaffing. That can’t be explained to a child. What my girls see now is two people who are kind to each other, know each other and trust each other, but don’t have any need for the symbiosis anymore. We must look, to them, like friends and parents, what more could they want?

What more could I want? This joy, the respect, this desire to get up in the morning and learn something, see something, feel something, and not worry how the seeing, feeling, doing affects my spouse. I want exactly what I have, and that feels really really good.