How Two Trips 10 Years Apart Showed the Cracks in My Marriage

I was in graduate school working on a master’s degree in creative writing when I started to experience serious issues in my first marriage. In my gut, I knew something was changing, and soon I’d need to make a choice.

At the time, I didn’t try write about it, but I did begin an essay for a literary travel writing workshop about two trips to Rome—on the first trip my ex-husband proposed, and on the second we were celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary.

I went through several revisions of that piece, and each round of edits gave me insight into how life’s challenges and the passage of time can change a marriage. Re-reading it today, I’m reminded that sometimes a marriage cannot be saved, and that’s ok. That was difficult for me to accept for a long time, but I’ve come to realize the lessons I learned and the resilience I discovered in myself provided a strong foundation as I began to build a new life.

I was honored that the editor of Full Grown People, an online publication devoted to “well-told true stories of how different people have figured it out as they’re going along” chose to publish my story in 2014.

Here’s an excerpt. Please click through to the Full Grown People site to read the entire story.

Roman Holiday

Shivering in the crisp December air outside Papà Giovanni, a restaurant on the corner of Via dei Sediari and Via del Teatro Valle in Rome, my husband, Chris, and I wait for the sliding glass door to open. We see couples inside, nestled in red leather banquettes and wooden chairs at two of the half-dozen close-set tables. Red and white tablecloths set off vintage china, and glittery poinsettia decorations remind me that it is just a few days after Christmas, even as fresh tulips in the center of each table hint at the coming spring. Dusty wine bottles line the room, tucked into alcoves or perched on ledges. An eclectic mix of drawings and paintings, along with faded postcards of Sicily, clutter the brick walls.

It is just as we remembered.

We are in Rome to celebrate our tenth year of marriage and also to escape a stressful year at home. Our relationship is strained by a multitude of factors: family drama due to the messy divorce of my husband’s parents, which has taken a broader emotional toll than we expected; Chris’s demanding job, which keeps him out of town for weeks at a time; and my perpetually tired and frazzled state due to graduate school, with two classes each semester on top of a full-time job. We need a break, and I hope our holiday to Rome will be a bright spot in the brewing storm—if not a full repair, then at least a period of some romance, a reminder of what it was like when we were happy.