After I Do

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

My family doesn’t keep secrets. We try to, but we’re all too excited to keep anything good to ourselves. It bursts out of us, overflowing like a ruptured pipe.

It just goes to show how alike failure and success can appear. Sometimes only you know the truth.

Ryan and I are two people who used to be in love. What a beautiful thing to have been. What a sad thing to be.

I wish I was the sort of person who doesn’t need her pain to be heard. I want to be the type of person who can keep it to herself and spare the feelings of others. But I’m not that person. My anger has to take flight. It has to be set free and allowed to bounce off the walls and into the ears of the person it could hurt the most.

Maybe that’s the difference between a friend and a sister: a friend can just listen to your problems in the present, but your sister remembers and reminds you of everything in the past.

Men’s handwriting is rarely identifiable by any sense of masculinity. It’s only identifiable by the lack of sophistication. They must decide in sixth grade to start worrying about other things.

I am overwhelmed with love for my mom right now. She always knows just what to do. When do you learn that in life? When do you learn what to do?

“There is no failing or winning or losing,” she says. “This is life, Lauren. This is love and marriage. If you stay married for a number of years and you have a happy time together and then you decide you don’t want to be married anymore and you choose to go be happy with someone else or doing something else, that’s not a failure. That’s just life. That’s just how love is.

My mother has been all I’ve needed. I forget that sometimes. I take for granted her ability to guide me, to guide our family, as its one true leader.

“You don’t think being happy is important?” “In a long-term marriage?” “Yes.” “Not only is it not the most important thing, but I would argue that it’s not even all that possible.” “To be happy at all?” “To be happy the whole time.”

“You sound like a loony.”

I’ve come to realize that resentment is malignant. That it starts small and festers. That it grows wild and unfettered inside of you until it’s so expansive that it has worked its way into the furthest, deepest parts of you and holds on for dear life.

Maybe it doesn’t matter if you need someone during the everyday moments of your life. Maybe what matters is that when you need someone, they are the one you need.

Maybe needing someone isn’t about not being able to do it without them. Maybe

needing someone is about it being easier if they ...

“You have that someone. That’s all I’ve been trying to say. Don’t give up on him just because he bores you. Or doesn’t pick up his socks.”

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. It’s a lesson learned by those who have faced the most miserable of tragedies, and it’s a secret that I suspect you yourself already know: the sun will always rise. Always. The sun rises the next day after mothers lose their babies, after men lose their wives, after countries lose wars. The sun will rise no matter what pain we encounter. No matter how much we believe the world to be over, the sun will rise. So you can’t go around assessing love by whether or not the

sun rises. The sun doesn’t care about love. It just cares about rising.

All that matters in this life is that you try. All that matters is that you open your heart, give everything you have, and keep trying.

Do you have more to give your marriage? If you do, give it everything you’ve got.