Slightly Divorced

by Liz Colville

“Almost every day of our honeymoon, and off and on throughout our newlywed year, one of us would say: ‘Hey, honey, let’s get divorced for five seconds, O.K.? Great, now that that’s out of the way …’ People look askance when we joke like this and laugh uncomfortably when my husband (still) introduces me as his ‘first wife.’ But the gallows humor is something positive, part of what made us seek out couples therapy instead of throwing in the towel when things got tough, part of what made my husband say, ‘No, I will not,’ when I asked him to leave during a rough patch in our seventh year of marriage. The real possibility of divorce and the firsthand experience of how often marriages fail have made us fight for ours rather than take it for granted.” — The poet Rachel Zucker’s real talk about her marriage in this weekend’s “Modern Love” column is a nice change from the usual programming.