When the break option first hit me, it seemed a ridiculous impulse. Where on earth would I go? Then one day at work, I found myself wandering onto craigslist. Suddenly I was responding to about a dozen sublet listings. One seemed cool, offering a female name, a return e-mail address at a recognizable company, and a phone number. I called, I visited, I loved the place, and I rented it for the following week, when she'd be abroad.

Then I went home and told my fiancé. (Lesson learned: Tell fiancé of plans to rent random stranger's apartment before renting random stranger's apartment.) My proposal didn't go over well at first. There was a lot of understandable suspicion about my motives. Was this because I wanted to entertain gentleman callers? Was this my way of easing into an eventual breakup? And if I loved him as much as I claimed to, why would I want to go through so much trouble to spend time away from him?

He never, however, threatened to leave me. He worked to understand where I was coming from and when he still didn't understand, he let me go anyway. The brief separation would be endurable, he said, if I came back ready to get married.

So once I got into the damn apartment, thanks to an insomniac neighbor who finally buzzed me in and a trusting locksmith who fixed my key the next day, I got to live this stranger's life. I cooked with her pans, washed in her shower, watched her digital cable, and slept in her bed for a week. (This was a cool voyeuristic side effect of breaks.) I shopped at her health food store, where I bought soy ice cream bars that I still buy all the time. Walking to her home from her subway line after work, I stumbled upon a new boutique I continue to visit from time to time. I read one of her books (thanks, Sublet Woman, for having the one David Sedaris I hadn't read yet!).

In short, I experienced things I liked about being an unengaged woman (namely, new little experiences like all of the above). I discovered things I didn't like about being away from my fiancé: being locked out at 2:30 a.m. with no one to call for help, for starters. Not to mention having someone who cared about the stupid little things that happened to me every day ("How was your day?" really is an expression of deep love), who would listen to my way-too-involved theories about why this week's episode of "The O.C." was pure genius, who would tell a bad pun to cheer me up when I came home crabby from work.

The week went fast, though, and I wanted more. I missed my fiancé and was happy to go home to him, but while I felt like I'd been getting somewhere, I hadn't gotten there yet. That first, week-long break taught me what may have been the most important lesson I'd ever learn about our relationship: that this man loved me so much, he would grant me the freedom to pursue my nutty idea to live alone for a week, even though he didn't totally get it.

He probably never thought I'd use that fact to go on yet another, longer break just a few months later.

I was still dragging my feet on setting a new wedding date, to even my own annoyance. But he was still resisting my pleas to move into Manhattan. And I hadn't committed one way or the other on the children question. We continued to fight over my late nights out with friends.

Then I happened to stumble upon a friend of a friend who needed someone to share her rent for a month until her roommate arrived from out of town. Once I heard that, I couldn't shake the thought of another break. This time I told my fiancé before I wrote the check. Of course, he wasn't thrilled about hearing "I'm moving out" for the second time in three months. But he was willing to listen. (I admit it: I reminded him, pointedly, that I'd given him months to figure himself out when he asked for that grad-school-era break. And that was the kind of break that allowed for the dreaded "seeing other people.") He wrote me a letter reminding me how much he loved me, and then, bless his heart, helped me move my stuff to the new place.

Many nights at my new third-floor walkup in Brooklyn, I read or wrote until 3 a.m. I really did eat nachos for dinner every day for a week straight. I stayed out as late as I wanted. I bought whatever clothes and makeup I wanted. And no one asked me why or how or with whom or how much. I was me, just me, moving to my own rhythms and tending to my own whims -- which helped me realize my bigger wants: to share my life with someone I love, but not grow to resent him; to plan some things, but not obliterate the surprises that make life interesting.

To have a marriage ... with the option for breaks.

Incidentally, with all this doing as I pleased, I saw my fiancé several times throughout the month. We started out intending to avoid all contact. But then, you know, I had to call him because I needed a phone number, and then I just wanted to check really quickly how this big work project turned out for him. Once, on a day when I was trying to think up another excuse to call him, he called me because he was in the city for a meeting. He asked me to an impromptu dinner at a little Italian restaurant; we kissed goodbye near his car on a cobblestone street and left each other wanting more. I agreed to go to a wedding with him, and we spent the night together at our condo having the kind of sex you have because you can't stand not to, not because you're lying next to each other and it's Saturday night so why not.

(And, by the way, keeping a month-long separation secret from most friends and family is easier than you think, thanks to cellphones. After trying to explain it to my mom and about three friends, that's what I did -- no matter how much intellectual discussion you engage in about freedom and compromise and the confused state of marriage in modern society, everyone still ends with, "So you guys are breaking up?")

I returned to our home at the end of the month having genuinely missed our life together. I wanted to please him, for the first time in a while. I knew I could live without him but didn't want to. And so I'd give him some of what he'd been saying he wanted: more involvement in my social life, more time together, dinner prepared by me once a week, and the prospect of kids in several years after I make some progress with my career. I ditched the dowdy engaged woman look for good, and my long hair and short skirts and tight jeans, thank heavens, returned.

My fiancé agreed to move into the city, seeing how happy my time there had made me, and to let me have my fun with my friends. He discovered he could let me go without worrying I'd forget about him. My glorious month away accomplished more than months of stalemate talks and torturous couples counseling.

And though things are better now, I wouldn't rule out hitting craigslist again if we start feeling cramped in our new one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan (which I presume will happen eventually, no matter how happy we are). I'm not sure I could marry somebody who couldn't occasionally let me go.

In fact, we're on another (albeit involuntary) break right now -- my company sent me to L.A. for two months. And because he doesn't have to worry about this being my idea, my fiancé is even getting into the spirit this time around: He's considering a film editing class he's always wanted to take but never had time for, and he's making new friends in the city. And I'm planning a small, casual wedding for next year.

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