For eight years, I believed my husband and I had the kind of marriage people quietly envy.
Not flashy. Not dramatic. Just steady.
We were the couple who knew exactly how the other took their coffee. The couple who argued over paint colors and forgot to water the herb garden but still laughed about it together. We had two cats who only acknowledged us when they were hungry, a cozy two-bedroom house, and the sort of weekend routine that looked boring to outsiders but felt like home to us—pancakes, half-finished DIY projects, and Netflix shows we barely paid attention to.
We had also survived things that should have broken us.