This post is Part 2 of a series exploring partnership and independence on the highways of America. You can read Part 1 here.

The trailhead of my existence is much different than my current self. That’s a fact.

For the last 15 years of my life, I’ve lived in some big, fancy-pants cities, full of big, fancy-pants restaurants, shops, theaters and coffee houses, all of which contain people chewing the fat of their big, fancy-pants ideals. Marriage is something you do after 30, having kids at 40 and beyond is entirely normal, buying a compact car is preferable (a hybrid would be the superior choice), and if you do change your last name it’s because it’s retro to do so (that was my excuse, anyway). Obviously, this is a somewhat sweeping generalization, but nonetheless it applies to the people I’ve largely surrounded myself with, even just by mere proximity.

If you’ve ever watched an episode of Gilmore Girls (and you really, really should), you have a pretty good picture of my hometown. There’s something almost inherently wrong with how cliché it is, but that’s also why I kind of love it. From an outsider’s perspective, the place just looks idyllic. Kids skipping down the street, neighbors waving enthusiastically. Narrower in its approach to life and culture, my hometown’s simplicity is a signifier of something more penetrable than what I’ve known the last 15 years. The options are fewer, the decisions about what to do with one’s life seem that much easier to make. People marry early, buy the house, have the kids, and oftentimes succumb to the minivan, usually all before 30. Some of my friends have children who are eight years old, and that kind of blows my goddamn mind.

My parents are still together. They’ll be married 40 years this August. I don’t know what the appropriate gift for that many years of waking up next to the same person is, but I do know they both deserve some kind of medal for putting up with one another. You couldn’t find two people who are more different. My mom was sheltered growing up; her farm town, puritan parents never let a drop of alcohol touch their lips. My dad grew up in a predominantly black mill town, and his father, my grandfather, is, for all intents and purposes, a functioning alcoholic. My mom is a miss goody two-shoes and my dad has, well, street cred. This makes for some hilarious events around the house, but also sometimes not. For better or worse, their marriage is one of my foremost touchstones.

My parents definitely love each other, but they also happen to hate each other. Living with them for two weeks (I really don’t recommend trying this if you can help it) the truly loathsome part of their relationship is wholly evident. They nag, bicker, blatantly disrespect each other, and just generally get on each other’s nerves. And it seems as though anytime there’s something to discuss, from taking out the trash to whether or not their daughter is headed for divorce, it comes in the form of an argument. And I don’t know how to feel about it when considering my own marital quandaries. More and more, Husband and I seem to have adopted this type of dysfunction. I don’t like it. And I don’t want to learn how to live with it. At all.

The reigning question in my mind at this point of my journey: is staying married, despite significant challenges, an admirable feat? After all, should we really pride ourselves on the fact that we can make it through 40 years in a sometimes-hostile environment, constantly wearing one another down? Is it really love if it’s also shrouded in a fair amount of hate? Is that constant push-and-pull better than divorce? If Husband and I make each other miserable just three years into this gig, is it ever really going to change? Or will it just sort of snowball and progress? I don’t know if I have that kind of energy.

Some unhappiness is only natural. A life featuring millions of people frolicking through a field would be pretty damn boring, ya know? There will be points where you’re just going to fucking hate the person you married. Points of looking at that person sitting across the dinner table with corn stuck to their face, wondering how that happens EVERY TIME THEY EAT CORN. You used to think it was funny, cute even. You probably shared a few laughs over it, at one point. But now, over time, the corn-face issue has become unilaterally representative of an outright lack of self-awareness. The presence of the corn, stuck on the face once again, mocks you.

But! Even just from monitoring my parents for the last two weeks I can see it’s all about the return on one’s investment (oh ho ho, look who’s talking all logical now!). The small things might not matter so much if other aspects of the relationship weren’t also depleted. Why is that so easy to forget? When I look at my parents, even though it seems at times like they harbor a deep and abiding hate for one another, over the course of their 40 years they’ve achieved some sort of balance. It’s hard to find at first, but it’s there. And that’s remarkable. They make investments in each other, and they’ve learned how to notice and appreciate what those investments are because sometimes men and women don’t seem to speak the same love language.

Unfortunately, when the real misery of a dissolving relationship takes hold, there’s no magic pro/con list that you can consult to weigh the costs and benefits and tell you what to do. There is no set timeline to make a decision. There’s just a choice to make, a very difficult one, and everyone’s tolerance for someone else’s bullshit depends on the individual. What’s your brand of crazy? Maybe we should think about it that way, because, the older I get the more I realize that everyone is, indeed, kind of nuts.

But the point is, when you slow down or stop caring for your relationship, don’t think for a minute this won’t change your partner, too. They’ll change until you don’t recognize them anymore. Once that happens, it’s hard to glue it all back together so it looks like it did before.

I don’t recognize my husband anymore. He probably doesn’t recognize me either. This goes beyond the petty things we do that irritate one other. I don’t actually believe we are purposefully trying to make each other miserable, either. As individuals we’re both too good to have consciously let that happen. This much I know.

So then, what is it about forgiveness in this situation that makes me so scared? To move on and grow, with or without him? I believe that if I don’t find a way to forgive myself and him, I will always be burdened with a longstanding anger that will work against me.

As I head back out on the road, alongside my best philosophical-conversationalist friend, my goal is to embrace and hang on to the stuff I’m now recognizing makes me feel alive, while pondering what it really means to forgive another. We’ll see.