After I Do

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

“This is a family vacation. I didn’t bring you all to Mexico to get high and hire hookers.”

By thirty, you’re supposed to have things figured out, aren’t you? You’re not supposed to be questioning everything you’ve built your life on.

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?”

I don’t know why Ryan and I are different. I just know that it’s OK that we are.

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

Ever think that the real problem with living without your spouse is that you’re sometimes just really bored? I figure he may not answer. Or he may not see it until later. But he texts me back right away: Soooooo bored. I underestimated how much time being married takes up in a day.

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

Why do we do this? Why do we undervalue things when we have them? Why is it only on the verge of losing something that we see how much we need it?

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

Here is what I can tell you. 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.

You and your husband reached a point in your marriage where most people would give up. And you didn’t. Let that speak to you. Let that guide you.