I fell in love with him on our second date. We shared mutual friends that introduced us. My roommate Fiona was dating his track teammate, Austin, and one Saturday in October during our junior year of college, she finally hauled me along to one of their local meets.

We hit it off after he took first place in the thirty-two hundred and he was in a celebratory enough mood to not stop smiling. I couldn’t stop staring at his lonely dimple or his bright blue eyes. He had the keen insight to know he’d charmed me.

Or maybe he just read the very obvious signs. I was not good at hiding my feelings.

Our first date was an absolute disaster, though. I was awkward and he was nervous. We didn’t find much to talk about and when he dropped me back at my dorm, I swore to Fiona that he would never call me again.

I never understood why he asked me out for our second date, but it was that next time, when he took me to my favorite Italian restaurant and then out for a drive that ended with trespassing and a moonlit walk through random fields in the middle of the country, that made me realize I would never find another man like him.

He had something I decided I couldn’t live without. His intentional questions and quick sense of humor held my attention and his big smile made my insides melty. I had never met anyone that made me feel that way… that made it seem as if I were the only person alive that had anything interesting to say.

If every night could be like that second date, I would never doubt what was between us, not even for a second. But after struggling to put up with each other for all of these years and knowing that whatever chemistry we had with each other fizzled a long time ago, I was exhausted.

I was starting to realize, I was also broken. Or if not broken, then breaking.

I couldn’t keep doing this.

And while I was deciding these things I had started to collect reasons for why we weren’t right for each other… why he wasn’t right for me. I was organized by nature. I was a list-maker. I couldn’t help but compile all of the reasons we were wrong for each other.

Even if they broke me.

Even if they destroyed us.

“What are we doing?” he mumbled into his hands.

Hot tears slipped from the corners of my eyes, but I wiped them away before he could see them. “I don’t know,” I whispered. My hands fell to rest against my flat stomach. “We hate each other.”

He whipped his head around and glared at me over his shoulder. “Is that what you think? You think I hate you?”

“I think we’ve grown so far apart, we don’t even know each other anymore.”

It was his turn to look like I slapped him. “What do you want, Kate? Tell me what you want to do. Tell me how to fix this?”

I recognized the pleading in his voice. This was how it always happened. We would start fighting about something mundane that neither of us would give in to, inevitably it would reveal our bigger issues, the ones we usually tried to ignore, then finally we would round out the night by Nick promising to do whatever it took to make this work between us. Only, the next morning we would wake up and nothing would be changed or fixed or forgotten and we would start the delusional cycle all over again.

I was sick of it. I was sick of feeling like this and walking on eggshells every time we weren’t fighting. I was sick of feeling bad for how I felt and the things that I said. And I was really sick of that look on his face right now, knowing I was the one that put it there.

I wanted to get off this crazy train. I wanted to wake up in the morning feeling good about myself and I wanted to go to bed at night knowing I wasn’t a huge disappointment.

My hands clenched into tight fists on my belly and I squeezed my eyes shut before they tried to leak out more painful memories. I glanced to my left, taking in my appearance in the mirror on the door that led to our bathroom. My long hair looked black in the dim lighting and my skin was so pale it could have been see-through. I stared at my eyes, as equally dark and empty as a black hole, and wondered if they were reflecting my broken spirit.

“I don’t think we can.” My words were a shattered whisper, but they felt like clarity… like truth. They were hurtful, but they were freedom. “I think we’re too broken, Nick. I think it’s too late for us.”

“What are you saying, Katie?”

I ignored the agonized rasp to his voice. If I started to feel bad for him now, I would never get this out. “This is over, Nick… We’re over. I think it’s time we were both honest with ourselves and admitted that.”

His response was immediate, “You’re for real? You really don’t want to try at this anymore?”

My temper shot up again and my face reddened from the hot anger pumping through me. “I have been trying! What do you think I’ve been doing for the past seven years? I’ve been trying every single day! And it’s not enough! It’s never enough! I cannot keep doing this day in and day out. I can’t keep pretending that things are okay and then falling apart every time we start arguing. Nick, I’m exhausted in my bones. You’re a good person, but it’s like… it’s like I bring out the absolute worst in you. And the same is true about me! I’m fun. I’m a really fun person. People like me! All of the people except you. And I don’t blame you! When we’re together I’m a nag and I’m ungrateful and I’m just… ugly. And I hate that person. I hate the person that I am with you. And I hate the person that you are…”

His head snapped up. I hadn’t meant to go that far or finish that thought, but Nick was too perceptive to miss it. “You hate the person that I am with you. Is that what you were going to say?”

I shrugged one shoulder, ashamed that I’d let those words slip out. I shouldn’t have said it, even if it was true. If nothing else, it drove my point home. I was a terrible person with Nick. To Nick. We’d made each other into horrible people.

Our relationship was toxic. He was slowly poisoning me.

I was slowly poisoning him.

“So what are you saying?” he demanded on a rasp. “You want a divorce? Is that what you want? You think we should get a divorce?”

I nodded, unable to get those precise words beyond my lips. “We aren’t good together. We hate each other.”

“Yeah, you’ve made that abundantly clear tonight.”

“Can you think of any reason that we should stay together? Give me one good reason that we should keep doing this to ourselves and I will try. I swear to you, if you can come up with one reason to stay together, I’ll keep doing this. But, Nick, god, this is ruining me. I don’t know how much more I can take before I just fall apart.”

This time when the tears started falling, I didn’t wipe them away or try to stop them. My chin trembled from the force of my emotion and a devastating sob racked my chest. It was true. All of it. I hated myself and I hated him because he was the one that had turned me into this awful person.

I could not do this anymore.

If he came up with a valid reason, I didn’t know what I would do. I knew I told him I would stick it out, but at this point, I couldn’t do it. I would never really try again at this broken relationship. I had nothing left inside of me to give.

He watched me for a long time. I could see him processing everything behind his veiled eyes. I knew he thought he was hiding his emotions from me, but after seven years of marriage and ten years of being together, I could read him like an open book.

This was his analytical phase. He had to weigh each piece of information, emotion against truth, accusation against reality before he could come to a logical conclusion.

My husband, the cold-hearted thinker. Logic and reason outweighed everything else. If it wasn’t a fact, then it didn’t exist to him.