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3 Minutes in Bed That Ended 20 Years of Marriage
I crossed the hall, offering what little I had left.
It was late — not just evening, but well into the quiet hours where every sound feels intimate, when the house itself seems to exhale, and there’s nothing left to do but either go to sleep or cross a line you’ve been circling all day. Our kid had been asleep for hours behind the closed door, the hallway lit only by the soft blue glow of the nightlight we kept on out of habit more than necessity, and the rest of the house had folded into that particular silence that comes after a decade of family life: clean countertops, empty rooms, stillness thick enough to feel like insulation.
I had been moving slowly all evening, lingering over small, unnecessary tasks, stretching out the ritual of bedtime long after our child’s breathing had settled into its predictable rhythm. I held myself just shy of the doorway that led to my husband’s room—a room we no longer shared and hadn’t for years.
It had been a long time since I’d crossed that hallway with intention, and yet, earlier in the day, somewhere between making dinner and checking emails from the last time, I had decided I would. Not because I wanted to. Not because I missed him. But because I still carried the belief that effort meant something. That a willingness to try could…
