The most terrifying thing in a marriage isn’t simple betrayal or letting someone down.
It’s this: in the heat of an argument, the person you once loved and trusted with everything — they reach into the most private, secret, vulnerable corners of who you are, and use those as weapons against you.
That’s when you realize that in their eyes, you — and everything you ever gave — amounted to something pitiful and worthless all along.
All those times you poured your heart out, all that effort you gave with everything you had — reduced in the end to nothing more than a dismissive smirk.
Having witnessed and analyzed so many marriages, I know this well: once things reach this point, the damage is almost always beyond repair.
(Just having some casual conversation with everyone these past couple of days — longer posts coming after the New Year.)