I would tell them that managing the thing quietly is not kindness. I thought of my management — of Elaine’s needs, of Nathan’s guilt, of the system’s requirements — as a form of care, a way of keeping things running smoothly. It was, partly. But it was also a way of postponing a reckoning that needed to happen, and the postponement didn’t prevent the reckoning; it just meant it arrived later and harder.
I would tell them that making a clear choice and living in its immediate aftermath is difficult but survivable. The weeks after I didn’t get on the trip were genuinely uncomfortable. I missed what I’d been looking forward to. I sat with uncertainty about what was going to happen. I went to sleep some nights not knowing whether the marriage I was in was going to be something I wanted to be in. These things were hard, and none of them were as hard as I had feared, and I was intact on the other side of them.
I would also tell them — and this is the part I’m most uncertain about — that the outcome is not guaranteed. I made a clear choice and Nathan had a clarifying experience and things have been different since then. But three months of being different is not thirty years of being different, and I don’t know what thirty years looks like yet. Some people make the clear choice and it doesn’t produce the change they hoped for. Some marriages absorb the reckoning without actually changing. I’m not in a position to promise that mine is different.