After I Do

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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

I have to admit to her that my marriage is failing. That I am failing. That I am not the successful and together older sister I have been pretending to be. That I am no longer the one with her shit together.

My heart is truly broken. And I know that even if it mends, it will look different, feel different, beat differently.

“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. How is that a failure?”

“Isn’t it nice,” he says, “once you’ve outgrown the ideas of what life should be and you just enjoy what it is?”

Unconditional love is the freedom to follow your heart and still have a home.

“Just because you can live without someone doesn’t mean you want to,” she says.

“All you have to do is never give up.”