The audit
What's broken, what's salvageable, what's already over. A frame that doesn't pre-decide the answer.
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§ Journey
What's broken, what's salvageable, what's already over. A frame that doesn't pre-decide the answer.
The week after I admitted to myself that something was wrong, I tried to make a list. One column at first: what's broken. I filled half a page in twenty minutes and stopped, because the list was both too long and too vague.
What worked, the second time, was three columns.
The audit isn't a verdict. It's a forensic exercise.
Take a real piece of paper. Three columns, top to bottom:
Most men, doing this honestly, end up with eight to twelve items spread across the columns.
If everything goes in column one, you're not being honest yet. Try again tomorrow.
The audit only works if the items are specific. "Communication" isn't an item. "The conversation about her sister at Easter that we never finished" is.
Yours, about her. The actual complaints. Not the polite ones. The ones running on a loop in your head at 3am.
Hers, about you, that you've actually heard. The ones she's said, sometimes more than once, that you've quietly filed under "she's overreacting".
What you actually contributed. The hardest list. Not what you did wrong. What you did, full stop. The years you worked late by choice. The hobby that took the weekends. The way you go quiet in arguments. The drinking. The phone in bed.
Specific. Forensic. Not prosecutorial.
The audit's most useful job is the distinction.
A marriage with problems has things in column one and column two. The damage is real and the foundation is intact. Most marriages with two adults, two careers, and at least one kid have problems.
A marriage that is over has things in column three that aren't going to move:
If column three has things like these, the audit is telling you something.
It isn't a court case.
It isn't a release valve. The act of looking changes you, not the marriage.
It isn't permanent. You'll come back to this in three months and find the items have moved.
It isn't shareable. Don't show her the list.
The audit is the moment you stop running on impressions and start running on data.
See clearly. Sort honestly. Wait one more week.
A blunt field guide to the first month after the conversation. Sleep, paperwork, the kids, and the part nobody warns you about.
5 minHow to start the talk you've been rehearsing in the shower for six months. A practical guide to the words, the room, the aftermath.
4 minWhen she ends it and you didn't see it coming. The first 72 hours, the stories you'll tell yourself, and what to actually do.
4 minA self-interrogation guide for the man considering ending his marriage. Not advice. Questions. The hard ones, in order.
5 min