I remember the exact moment I realized that things might not work out with my husband.

We had been married a couple of years. His job had moved us away from our family and friends, but we were back in town for his friend's wedding. The trip corresponded with my birthday and I was excited to celebrate it with all our old pals.

My husband and I had an agreement that he would get to spend a bunch of time with his friends and I would spend a bunch of time with mine. His friends preferred video games and drinking beer while my friends liked going out dancing and enjoying the nightlife. It's not that our friends didn't intermingle, but it was definitely a situation where the guys hung out with the guys, and the girls hung out with the girls.

The morning of my birthday my husband took off with his friends. He was gone all day long. I didn't have anyone to spend time with during the day because all my friends were at work so when I asked him to carve some time out of his day for me, he got really defensive.

"You said I could hang out with my friends as much as I wanted!" he argued.

Yes, I had encouraged him to spend time with his friends during the vacation, but I guess I figured that maybe my birthday might be cause for some time together. I didn't even care if he had invited me along with whatever they were all doing that day. I just didn't want to sit alone on my birthday.

Silly me.

Late that night he came back to the hotel with his friends and a cake from a grocery store bakery. They all stood around me and sang "Happy Birthday" in a way that tipped me off that all these guys knew I was mad at my husband, and they all thought I was a typical hysterical female. Have you ever heard "Happy Birthday" sung by five very unenthusiastic men who wanted to be somewhere else? It's not pretty.

I've been listening to Ingrid Michaelson all week. One particular CD — it's like she's crawled into my head and is digging about it in, only in a catchy/lovely/song lyrical kind of way. My past two years are there in their entirety, neatly, in 10 tracks or so.

This one song — "Corner of Your Heart" — I can't stop listening to it. I can't stop because it upsets me so much, like a bruise you can't stop pressing. It's beautiful and haunting and infinitely disturbing. I can't turn it off.

"There's a corner of your heart just for me," it goes. "I will pack my bags just to stay in the corner of your heart. Just to sleep underneath your bed. Just to occupy one minute of your day."

Now, I don't know if this intended to be a love song. Maybe it is. Maybe to other people there is romance in it.

But to me, it's horrifying. It's everything that was wrong about my relationship: me just wanting something, something, anything that would tell me I was loved back. It's me being offered only a corner, being willing to take that. Being happy with that. Giving up so much in hopes of that one minute.

I can't stop listening to it because I want to know if that's what it's meant to mean. Because I recognize myself in it. And because I'm so far away from that place now and don't want to go anywhere near it again.

Also, it's a really pretty song.

Lindsay knows exactly what to do when a friend is getting divorced. She doesn't press. She doesn't pester with questions. She doesn't fill the space with reassurances or aspersions - she allows silence. She allows time. She knows that what's needed is normality.

At the same time, she'll let you that, anytime you need, it, you can call her and she'll drive out and spend the day with you, or the afternoon, or the hour. She'll take you to lunch, she'll go to a movie, she'll just sit with you so you're not alone.

When you move to a new place, she's the one that will spend the first night with you so you're not alone, making the weekend into a party instead of a chore, keeping any of it from being sad. She'll unpack boxes. She'll organize your closet and your kitchen.  

She is, in short, an invaluable friend. 

The other reason to look to Lindsay is that she has a marriage that makes me rethink my certainty that relationships can't last. Years in, she and her husband are still in love, still happy, still right for each other. They make room for each other's lives while still sharing them. They compromise. They talk. They are each other's best friends, and they still make out.  

There are people like this in the world. There are relationships like that out there. This is good to remember. 

Counting "divorced" as one of my personal adjectives is a bizarre thing. Like it or not, this is now a huge part of who I am. I don't like this as an identifier, but there's no getting around how much this has shaped me. You don't spend 15 years with someone and lose them without it becoming a part of you. But still — I'm tall. I'm a teacher. I'm divorced. This is a descriptor. This is uncomfortable.

I was about to meet Mike's parents, and realized this was how they know me — I'm someone from college. I'm someone from California. I'm someone who's divorced. Worse, actually, I'm someone who is getting divorced.

I had no idea how to bring this up when I started dating. When do you tell someone? You bring it up too early, it's, "Whoah, hey, that's a lot of information for someone I just met." Too late, "How could you not tell me this earlier?" The problem is, of course, compounded by the fact that the thing isn't final. I tried casually slipping it into conversation: "We used to do so and so — oh that was back when I was married," but was never able to pull it off successfully.

What was nice about Mike was that he has known me since college, so there was no news to break. There was, though, that horrible moment way at the beginning, when he said, "So, when did your divorce become final?" And having to answer, "Well, it's not."

Eventually, this will be so far in the past that it will cease to be a top-three descriptor. Eventually, everything will have been finalized for so long that I won't have thought about it in ages. Eventually, I'll stop worrying about what parents and new friends and colleagues think. This day, honestly, can't come soon enough.

They say the mirror has two faces, and I think that's true. I don't think that one is simply a reflection of the other, though.

My second ex always had two faces: one that he'd present to everyone else in the world and one that he'd show to me.

People would always smile when they saw my ex. They liked him. He was friendly and personable. He would joke and laugh. He could be very helpful and forthcoming when he saw others were in a bind.

It didn't surprise me that people were shocked when we announced our separation. "But he's such a great guy," they'd say, aghast I'd consider leaving my partner.

Yes. He is a great guy. Just not with me.

I often asked my ex, "Why can't you be like that all the time? Why can't you be like that with me?" He couldn't see the difference. To him, he was being the very same with me, only more open and honest. I found him blunt and disrespectful.

My mother used to call me when the 6 o'clock news reported a man killing his girlfriend or a spouse beating up his partner. I can still hear the contempt in her voice. "Did you hear what they said about the guy? He was such a great guy."

I think that people who live together learn very quickly to take each other for granted. They relax their guard and assume that because they're a couple, they can be themselves. They don't have to maintain appearances in the comfort of their own home.

Now, when my ex and I talk about other couples, we're a little smarter and a whole lot wiser. When we hear of someone who sounds dissatisfied, we give each other a knowing glance. Appearances must be upheld in public; behind closed doors, it's a different story.

I've also learned how to answer people who mention how my ex is such a great guy. "Yes, he is," I smile. "Just not with me."

Marriage is wonderful when it works. Everyone is looking for a happily ever after.

But marriage takes energy, and these days average couples are working harder than ever to keep a marriage together, so you can imagine the challenge for a couple in the limelight, like Star Jones and Al Reynolds.

Someone told me they overheard Star on a plane a couple months ago saying that she and her husband had not even been in the same city over the last few months.

Can't blame the airlines for this long a layover.

For reasons only Star and Al know, one or more things along the way changed up their original gameplan for their version of..."happily ever after." I don't think she had that big wedding with the intention of getting divorced...getting a few freebies, maybe.

No one has a wedding with the intention of getting divorced. No one should judge, though people due to human nature cannot help themselves. Like Star said, "The dissolution of a marriage is a difficult time in anyone's life that requires privacy with one's thoughts."

Regardless of who files for divorce, it's painful and awkward for everyone involved.

There will be some other version of "happily ever after" for her and for him.

Though it's hard to imagine at the time, usually events that force change often bring you to a stronger better place — sometimes just a stronger arm — but hey, that also works.

Everyone who goes through divorce has another version of "happily ever after" within their reach.

Turns out, when traveling, I'm astonishingly antisocial.

My solitude was premeditated in Wales, as I was determined to learn how to be alone. I figured I'd feel differently in Vienna. It's a city, after all. It doesn't grind to a halt at 5 pm. I wasn't planning on sitting on a hill and contemplating my life; I'd just be a regular tourist.

I did meet a lot of people. Some, I did not take to. Jim from New Jersey and his friend Thomas, a local organ player, for example. They chatted me up at a bar one night, until they asked what I taught. I said, "drama." They thought I said, "German," and there followed a very confusing five minutes, after which they lost all interest.

Also Pepe, from Kosovo, who followed me around the street for a good 10 minutes, grinning widely, before approaching me, telling me his life story, and asking if I would get coffee with him.

But many people were lovely. A group about my age had a brief, friendly conversation with me at a café one night. A couple from Albany shared my pension breakfast table one morning and invited me to join them at the museums that afternoon. I found, though, that I didn't want to join anyone. I liked wandering alone. I liked being quiet. I liked not worrying about pleasing anyone but me.

What I started thinking about on this trip is the difference between a need and a preference. Turns out, I don't need anyone else around, and, quite often, I prefer the solitude.

Now that I know this, I can figure out when it is I prefer to have company. It was okay that I got lonely some nights in Vienna, and I would rather have had someone there, because I know that I don't need someone there.

I spent much of the flight from San Francisco to Vienna analyzing the difference between setting out on this trip and heading to Wales.

Leaving for Wales had a strange feeling to it. I was headed across the world, and there was nothing, really, tying me to home. I felt strangely adrift, without a tether — just this little floating dot. After having been a half of a whole for so long, it was just me. No one was waiting for me to come back. No one needed to know I had landed safely. It wasn't a bad feeling, it was just strange.

I didn't feel that way this time. The floating-in-my-bubble sense was gone completely. Why? Was it because I had already done this, and so knew I could? Or was it because I'm in a relationship, so that tether is back?

I had always chafed at the idea of being back in a relationship. I didn't want the responsibility, the ties, the obligations. I wanted to be free to go where I wanted, to do what I wanted, to not have to answer to anyone.

Surprisingly, that tether wasn't chafing. It didn't feel like an obligation. It wasn't even a strong enough feeling to really register, just an, "Oh, this is different."

Going to Wales was largely an act of defiance. Maybe now I've gotten past that.

I am back from Vienna. It was cold (very cold), beautiful, cobbled, and simultaneously the perfect place to be alone and very, very lonely. I had a fantastic time, most of the time. But, being me, I spent a lot of time trying to work out exactly how I felt each and every minute of the trip, deciding what that meant, deciding where it means I go from here.

The first day was miserable.

The airline lost my bag, gave me a form to fill out, and shrugged. "If it's still in D.C.," the pleasant but unhelpful woman said, "it will be on tomorrow's flight. Then you'll get it sometime after that. But we don't know where it is."

It was 8 a.m. San Francisco time, it was midnight. I was exhausted and without clean underwear. On top of that, it was cold. Really cold. Too-cold-to-be-outside cold. This presents a problem when the point of your trip is to walk around and look at buildings.

Jet lag makes me unhappy and lonely. And I never remember that. I never think, "Wait, you're always kind of miserable your first day anywhere. This passes, and then you're happy. Go get some schnitzel, take a nap, and wait it out." Instead I think, "What am I doing here? Why am I spending money to be unhappy in Europe instead of being comfy at home, on my couch, with my cat and the Internet?" Clearly, before setting out again, I need to tattoo a reminder to myself on my hand or something.

Next post: things perk up. Also: we spend a great deal of time analyzing exactly how we feel. Also: skeletons.

I went to Wales, and I did it by myself. I decided to go, I planned the trip, I bought the ticket, and I did that alone. I didn't get lost. I didn't miss any busses. I did exactly what I had pictured doing.

I had this fantasy of sitting on a hill and being surrounded by green and just thinking — and halfway through the week I looked around and realized I where I was and what I was doing was just what I had seen in my head.

In the process, somehow I got this persona — this kind of girl who picks up and goes somewhere just because she wants to, and doesn't need anyone else with her.

The number of people who are awed by that is astonishing — and I want to say, no, no, you're talking about me. I'm scared to do anything. I never take risks. I do nothing spontaneous. I'm gripped by terrible inertia.

But, it turns out, even if you think this person isn't really you, the fact that you've done it means that it is you. This person — this person in her 30s with a backpack and a pair of boots and no idea if she'll be able to find the right bus, that person who goes a week without a computer or a phone, who spends a week utterly, utterly alone with herself and her own thoughts — that person is me, after all.

This year, I'm going to Vienna. Why? Because it sounds pretty. By myself? Yes. I'm going to go to the opera and listen to Mozart and get lost in the city centre. I can't afford it, I don't speak German, and I don't know a soul there. But I'm going.

I'm going because I can. Because no one can tell me I can't. And because that feeling that I am capable of doing this, because actually being that kind of person for a while. I liked that.