The end came the night I thought my youngest son had once again sent one of his "Army guys" on a water mission in the toilet. The week before we had had to rescue a diminutive G.I. Joe from the clogged pipe. So when the toilet overflowed I thought it had happened again. I didn't know I had caused the problem by flushing a dead fish I'd found floating in the aquarium earlier in the day.

I must have seemed like a wild woman the way I accused my 5-year-old of sabotaging the toilet. I held my hands to his tiny shoulders and accused him until he pled guilty just to get me off him. I didn't realize my capacity for anger. I didn't realize I was taking it out on the wrong person. With the force of a hurricane, the power of 15 years of denial washed ashore.

The other children looked on in horror as I unjustly accused their small comrade. That's when I felt the blow. A sharp pain moved across my backside. I turned away from my son to see what happened. There stood my wide-eyed husband ready to hit me again. The kids scurried to the safety of their bedrooms while he and I duked it out.

He'd promised he would never hit me. Striking me was the last, ultimate betrayal. It was something I'd witnessed my father do to my mother. I had no capacity for tolerance or forgiveness. I needed to get out of the house, cool off, clear my thoughts. He blocked me. I forget most of what I said, though I remember white flecks of spit leaving my mouth as I struggled to get past him. I do remember saying that if I had a gun I would blow his brains out. I meant it. By God, I meant it. He finally let me through.

The kids said they thought they would never see me again. They didn't know I was in the driveway the whole time, sitting below the kitchen window, catching my breath, trying to stop shaking. Forty-five minutes later I returned. I gathered everyone in the living room and apologized. My anger and intensity had frightened me, too. Inside, though, I resolved that it was time to go.

The day I moved us out -- me and the kids -- was difficult, but every day since that one has been mine. He told me I was taking the easy way out, but I disagreed. Starting over at 34 with four kids as a full-time college student was the toughest, most rewarding thing I ever did.

That was five years ago. We are still raising our kids together. He lives three blocks away, and the kids are free to move between the houses as they please. We work things out on a daily basis. You could even say we're friends. Once, our oldest announced, "This is the best divorced family I've ever known."

I don't have the energy to be angry anymore. I don't hate my ex-husband; I just don't want to be his wife. I don't even get worked up that he hasn't paid his child support in over a year. Maybe I should. But that would take energy, and it would disrupt this hard-earned peace, and I can't for the life of me think of a good reason to give that up.

-- CynK

Procreation angst

I met Jonathan less than six months before my 28th birthday. Our courtship went pretty fast. Our first date lasted about 12 hours and our second began and ended with really great sex. Two weeks after I had met him, Jonathan's apartment in Brooklyn had become my weekend home -- a mini-vacation from the noise and congestion of Manhattan.

I was very clear on how my life was going to go before Jonathan sat across from me at Starbucks and shared his bizarrely honest philosophies on, well, everything. Writer, performer, artist, teacher, world traveler. Over the years, as I discovered the amount of work and sacrifice that went into creating a lifestyle, the images changed periodically, and I found vocabulary that better suited my goals. But not until I started falling in love with Jonathan did I realize that none of those images ever involved a kid, a cozy house with the accompanying SUV or a husband.

Even before we made it to month two, I was well aware that the pictures living in Jonathan's head differed drastically from mine. He told me he wanted children -- three of them. He had only made it to 33 without any because he wanted to be sure he was ready financially and emotionally to raise them. "I want all the joy and all the pain of being a parent," Jonathan told me. I almost cried when he said that. Partly because I so badly wanted him to get exactly what he saw in his picture. But mostly because I knew that I would not be the one to give him those three little Jonathans.

It says a lot about the heart when you can fall in love with someone who you are absolutely incompatible with. One morning I turned to Jonathan and told him I was hungry. He disappeared into his kitchen and emerged with an Entenmann's box and two cokes. I hate coke and had gotten used to stopping by this quaint Hungarian cafe for a Sunday morning croissant and latte over the years, but I tore off a piece of stale Danish, sipped my coke and thought, I am in love with this man. I want to be what he wants. I want to give him what he needs.

Then came all the damn questions. All these years when I was saying I wasn't interested in motherhood, did I mean not until I'm 30ish or did I mean I just didn't want children? Ever? If it was a "just not now" response to my newly mothered friends, what if I got that uncontrollable urge to squeeze out 8 pounds of life when I was 40 and less fertile?

As our relationship progressed, Jonathan told me point blank that our relationship could only go so far. "You don't have to pledge to be the mother of my children right now, but you have to at least want children if this is going to get any more serious." Then he asked me the question I still did not have an answer to. "So, do you?" I gave the easiest reply I could. "I'm not sure." He didn't respond.

I broke up with Jonathan three months after we celebrated my 28th birthday. There was a weekend of panic when I ended up back in his bed, hoping I could convince myself that family was not a tedious job with loads of grunt work and little time to yourself. After a few weeks, we were right back where we started. "What do you want?" he wondered. I wonder the same damn thing.

-- Keturah Kendrick

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We want to make you a part of this series. What is the state of your union? Did you find the one and never look back, or has finding lasting love been a marathon of trial and error? Did you have a fairy-tale wedding only to watch things crumble once the reception was over, or have you glided along in marital bliss since Day One? We want to hear your stories of joy, romance, heartbreak and pain. After all, partnership, as we all know, is a complex concoction of all of those things. (Please remember: Any writing submitted becomes the property of Salon if we publish it. We reserve the right to edit submissions, and cannot reply to every writer. Interested contributors should send their stories to marriage@salon.)

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