Jill Andres - The Marriage Test: Our 40 Dates Before

BROOK: I remember sitting on the couch, staring at a dead TV, trying to breathe. You hungry? Jill asked when she walked into our apartment. She was just getting back from a friends bachelorette weekend in New Orleans. We should talk first, I said. She put down her bag and I could see the color drain from her face until it matched mine. Let me go to the bathroom first, she said, and I sat there waiting, counting the breaths until I blew up our lives.

At that point wed been together for nearly four years in the best, most serious relationship either of us had known. A mutual friend invited us to the same small party and Jill was the first person I noticed, the energetic, strong-willed center of the room. Blue eyes and brown curls. I was smitten. Within a couple of months we were inseparable, hanging out six nights a week all over New York City. She was funny and smart and we liked the same trashy bars and could talk all night about that science story in the Times or why Mexican food sucks on the East Coast.

At first it was platonic, then it wasnt; either way it was like magic just being together. You know that scene in a rom-com where the couple first meets? Every day felt like that. Dad, how do you know when youre really in love? Son, youll know when you know. I never had that conversation with my dad, but you get the idea. I knew. After three years together she was still the best friend Id ever had. And we moved in together. And people thought we were getting married. And all along the whole thing had been fucked.

Sitting on the couch, I couldnt quite say why it was fucked. I could only just barely tell that it was. Its awfully hard to look at a relationship honestly when youre still in it. After the fact, we all pretend the problems were easy to see. But when youre still trying to keep it alivebecause of love or comfort or feareverything seems curable. For a long time we were stuck in that dark, undiagnosed place. Nothing is perfect. How good is it really supposed to be before we commit our lives to each other? How do we know which side of that line were on?

Picking a partner is the most important decision any of us will ever make, but how are we supposed to make it? Being in love is obviously a good start, but the things that ultimately wreck marriagesmoney and monogamy, career and kidsare hard to practice for until youre actually hitched. What if she spends too much? What if Im a bad dad? You can be together for years without ever truly auditioning each other for the Big Job.

And thats what Jill and I did. We comfortably drifted along, talking about that article we just read and why East Coast burritos are bad. We stoically ignored that our relationship was dyinguntil Jill came out of the bathroom with a box of tissues to sit with me on the couch for our funeral. Four good years, gone like that. They were garbage now, a mistake, a waste, something to be vaguely embarrassed about. And the scariest part was, we just as easily could have gotten married without realizing what a bad idea that was.

JILL: Brook and I sat there on the couch and cried for a long while. His decision to end it was like the last chapter of a mystery novel: At first it was surprising and then I realized the whole story had been a collection of hints pointing to this end. First lets fondly remember the misdirections: We loved each other more than wed ever loved anyone else and had an incredible amount of fun. We shared adventures across five New York boroughs and four continents. Best of all, we were super-positive influences on each other. Brook nudged me toward grad school, I helped him plant roots. We were, I swear, great together in so many ways.

But a couple can fall in love and stay in love and still be wrong for each other. Even during the best of times, there were quiet reservations, things we felt but would never say. Like the fact that we struggled to connect sexually. We were always affectionate, but for some reason that failed to translate into a fulfilling sex life. Thats just what happens when you go from being platonic friends to partners, I told myself. Or the fact I never really felt optimistic about our future. Friends would say theyd never heard anyone in such a strong long-term relationship use the phrase If things work out between us so often. Being conservative is a normal reaction to falling in love, right?

Pairing off may be humanitys core function, but were still totally shit at it. This is where I should mention the 50 percent divorce rate. Except the U.S. divorce rate is probably closer to 40 percent. The precise number is impossible to say because the data is poorly kept and no one knows what percentage of people married two years ago will end up divorcing. But a University of Michigan economist projected that if current trends continued, only about 35 percent of marriages would end in divorce.