The Ultimate Decision
They both knew this was the first of what would be many conversations that would lead them to the ultimate decision of whether they should stay married or get divorced. Neither was looking forward to it.
Sara and Jason met shortly after college, at their first real job. It was at Whirlpool, in St. Joseph, Michigan. She was in product development; he was in marketing. Their paths crossed often to ensure the stuff the appliance giant churned out would resonate enough with people to get them to buy the product.
Sara was whip-smart, focused, career-oriented. She had a lean, athletic body—a result of genetics and a dedicated workout regimen. Her hair was jet black and shoulder length. Fair skin in the winter, but she collected and held a tan nicely during the brighter, longer days. Her eyes were wide and bright blue. Full lips often revealed a wide, bright smile that ejected an infectious laugh. She liked to cook and read X-Men comics and business books. Led Zepplin was her favorite band. She was the youngest of three girls and had always been close with her sisters. Her parents divorced when she was thirteen, but she never chose sides, and her parents remained friendly. She had a solid family unit, which included her parents’ second marriages and step-siblings, all of whom lived in the Chicago area.
Jason was a terrible student but sharp in the way that complimented Sara’s intelligence. He used to wrestle and play baseball. He was by no means fat, but he was a big guy. Not lean, but athletic. He also worked out, but focused more on muscle mass than he did cardio and calorie burning. He had short, light brown hair, which he kept professionally disheveled. His olive skin never faded in the fall and didn’t get noticeably darker no matter how many days he spent on the lake at his family’s vacation home in Southwestern Michigan—not terribly far from St. Joe. His bold green eyes disappeared when he smiled. He always seemed to be holding his laughter in, as if unbridled, he might never stop. He was a movie buff and consumed books like he was breathing air. Fiction, mostly. But he had a soft spot for the history of air travel and the space program. His older brother had special needs, a responsibility Jason took seriously. His parents loved each other but they bickered constantly. The prototypical old married couple. Mom was the softie. Dad was tough as a rhino. Their primary home was in the uber-wealthy Chicago suburb of Winnetka.
Sara and Jason liked each other immediately. And since they started their career journey on the same day, they shared a newbie bond. After a month or so, Jason began swinging by her desk each morning to chit-chat. Sara would message him about grabbing lunch. When people went out for drinks after work, Sara and Jason usually sat near one another and would unintentionally peel away from the group and explore their own conversation. Pretty quickly, co-workers began teasing that they were each other’s work wife and husband.
About a year into their jobs, around Thanksgiving, the usual gang was enjoying a happy hour at Silver Beach Pizza. Sara and Jason had hunkered away from the rest. They ordered Silver Beach’s famed Thanksgiving Pizza just for themselves and were scarfing it down between guttural laughs when the teasing began.
“There’s Mr. and Mrs. Benning,” Rohit, the most annoying co-worker, said.
“What makes you think Jason won’t take my last name?” Sara snapped back with a mouth full of crust, mashed potatoes, corn, stuffing, cranberry sauce, turkey, and gravy.
“Yeah, Rohit. Don’t be so patriarchal,” Jason said, his mouth also full. “I think ‘Jason Jenson’ has a nice ring to it.”
Sara and Jason smiled at each other. Their eyes locked. Jason put his hand on her knee.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“What are we doing?” he replied.
Sara looked away sheepishly. She bit her lip and looked back at him. “You’re right.” Then she kissed him.
They spent another two-and-a-half years at Whirlpool before Sara got a job offer back in Chicago at a less sexy company but with a better title, more money, and growth opportunities. She had to take it. She encouraged Jason to look for a job in Chicago. He did. He wasn’t so lucky. She moved. He felt abandoned. They tried making it work, but they couldn’t. His career jealousy complicated things. So did her busy social schedule with new co-workers in the big city. They broke up. They thought it best to cut all contact for the sake of healing their hearts. They were devastated.
Sara built her life in Chicago. She made friends but didn’t date with any sort of seriousness. Jason stayed in St. Joe pining for Sara while hooking up with other co-workers. It got to be dramatically complicated because St. Joseph was a small town and the hook up pool was shallow. There was a lot of cheating going on. It was the social culture of the young professionals. Jason was growing tired of it. And he never stopped looking for opportunities in Chicago. After another year and change, he locked down a marketing gig with Quaker Foods. The title was great, the money was great, and being closer to family and away from the toxicity of the small town was great. And Sara was there.
They day he moved into his apartment, he texted her.
“Hey, SJ! Guess who’s living in Chicago now? How’s your life been? Wanna grab a drink and catch up? No pressure. Nothing weird. Just checking in on my ex-work wife.”
She responded within moments. “Welcome to the big city! Have you ever had Chipotle? There’s one around the corner from my apartment. Let’s meet there. I think you’ll be impressed.”
“Sounds authentic. Deal. What’re the cross streets?”
Their apartments were three blocks from each other. They shared a Chipotle. And within six months, they shared an apartment. Her lease was up. He broke his. They talked about the year apart from each other without jealousy or resentment. Mostly, they talked about the future. Three years later, they were married. He proposed over the Fourth of July weekend at the Michigan lake house. Her entire family was there for it—step parents and siblings, and all.
_____
Eleven years after that, they were at a different Chipotle because their Chipotle had become a weed dispensary. Sara suggested they meet in public to have the serious talk they both knew they needed to prevent either of them from blowing up and turning the conversation into a screaming match, which is what most of their conversations had become of late. Jason suggested they meet at a Chipotle because he thought it might remind them of the good old days. Or, at least, he thought he’d get a laugh out of her. He struck out on both attempts.
The fraying of the knot that was their marriage was slow. It usually is. Resentment grows like black mold. Quietly, out of sight, thriving in obscurity—in the assumption that everything is fine and the hubris that water damage could never occur in your home.
Jason’s patience for everyday annoyances was all but eliminated after his brother died. Complications from his condition that were as unexpected as they were typical.
Sara had a falling out with her oldest sister. And because of this, that sister abandoned the family entirely. Sara felt responsible, and she dove deep into self-loathing. Jason labeled her a professional, functioning alcoholic.
Jason got laid off. He struggled to find work for a year. Money became tight. His dad, who had plenty of the stuff lying around, refused to help. He said Jason and Sara were adults who needed to figure it out. Jason stressed over every penny and hated himself for landing in that position. He stopped working out. He smoked too much weed and ate too much garbage.
Sara felt she carried all the responsibility to provide for them. Even after Jason locked down a new gig and started earning again, she resented him—and his wealthy family’s stinginess to not help out—for them having to play catch-up with their savings accounts.
They had far too many miscarriages.
They became mean. Playful ribbing was replaced with off-the-cuff insults. “Hang on, don’t move,” Jason said one morning as they got ready in the bathroom. “I dropped a contact.”
“You should try dropping a few pounds,” Sara said reflexively as she applied her mascara.
Before her best friend’s wedding, where she was the Bride’s Maid, she modeled her dress for him. “It looks great. If you want to look like your grandma at her 1950s cotillion.”
They tried therapy. But Sara was a brick wall. She didn’t want to hear him spin her version of things. He was so good at that. It was the marketer in him.
Where they once had insatiable physical attraction, she came to feel nothing when she looked at him. Untouched, his eye wandered to the free porn websites. Even though she was more and more grossed out by him, she wanted him to make a move. But he preferred to stay on the couch after she’d gone to bed so he could watch porn on his iPad and smoke weed while shoveling handfuls of dry Froot Loops in his mouth. She quietly drank wine in bed scrolling Instagram.
Sara began burning money on mail-ordered fast fashion and expensive trips with her girlfriends. Jason burned money on weed and OnlyFans accounts.
Things became quiet in their West Loop condo. Until Sara, while loading the dishes from their Thai takeout dinner, and halfway through her second bottle of pinot gris, shattered the comfortable discomfort.
“Why can’t you just load the dishwasher like a normal fucking person!?”
Jason was packing a bowl of Northern Lights weed. “Tell you what… I’ll load the dishes exactly as you want me to as soon as you stop blowing all of our money on shitty leggings and Amazon packages of crap we don’t need.”
“How are those things even related?”
“How are you still awake? Shouldn’t you be passed out in bed by now?”
“I’m cleaning up our dinner. Something you haven’t done since weed became legal.”
“But clearly, you’re so good at it. And I’m, apparently, not.”
“Maybe you could find an OnlyFans account that has some naked slut loading a dishwasher. Maybe then you’d do it right.”
“I told you! I told you that I canceled those subscriptions!”
“I get the credit card statement, Jason! Do you think I’m stupid!?”
“Can I plead the Fifth?”
“Can you go fuck yourself?”
“Well, someone has to fuck me!”
“Well, this someone would if you weren’t such a tub of pot and cereal burps!”
“Right. Like you would even know what you were doing. Screwing your drunk ass would constitute as rape.”
“I’m not drunk!”
Sara then knocked her full glass of wine off the counter, shattering it on the floor.
“I think we’re done here.”
“Enjoy your weed!” Sara said as she slammed the dishwasher closed, grabbed the bottle of wine and headed to their bedroom.
Jason cleaned up the broken glass and wine. He looked in the dishwasher and studied it. He could not figure out what was wrong with the way he loaded it.
Most nights and days together went like this. Silence followed by outbursts of irrational rage followed by silence. Yet, there were moments of kindness. Bi-monthly lovemaking out of routine and physiological need more than love and affection. Week or month-long spells of peace, which gave both of them hope that they were still the couple their friends envied and that they could pull themselves out of the tailspin they were in—both as a couple and as individuals.
But that resentment, the thing neither of them had identified, always managed to pull them back into the spin. The stall. The nose dive.
Until that early evening at Chipotle.
“I think I still love you,” Sara began as Jason took a huge bite of his steak burrito.
“I think I still love you, too,” he said with a full mouth.
“Or maybe it’s that I still love the old you.”
“Mm-hm.”
“What I know for sure is that I resent you.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know. Everything? Most things? Some things?”
“That’s helpful.”
“I resent that. Can we please have a serious conversation?”
“I’m not joking. Look, I’ve got resentment, too.”
“I know.”
“So, what do we do?”
“Change?”
“You’re going to quit drinking?”
“I can. Will you stop smoking weed?”
“I can.”
“Can you?”
“Can you? I just said I can. I’m willing to try.”
“Are you?”
“Sara… I just said—”
“I know. I’m sorry. It’s just that… Should we still be doing this? We’re not the same people we were. We’re not… we’re not… good for each other anymore.”
“It’s like we don’t know how to support the other person. Like… we don’t even want to.”
“I know.”
“Can I get a scoop of your guacamole?”
“It’s communal. For the chips.” She nudged the plastic cup of guac toward him. He scooped a heap onto the tinfoil he was using as a plate for his burrito and mashed the burrito into it before taking another massive bite. Sara winced in gentle disgust.
“So, do you want to?” he asked, again, with a full mouth.
“What?”
He chewed a few moments and swallowed. Sara rolled her eyes. “Do you want to support me? Do you want me to support you?”
“I don’t know? I mean, yes, I want you to support me.”
“But you don’t want to support me.”
“I don’t know.”
“Then what are we doing?”
“We’re talking.”
“About divorce.”
“I don’t know.”
“Thing is, man… if it weren’t for divorce, I’d have student loans.”
They sat quietly, sulking in the sounds of Chipotle white noise. “Drops of Jupiter” by Train was playing through the restaurant’s speakers. Two thirtysomething guys sat down at the table next to Sara and Jason. Sara gave Jason a familiar look that said, “There are plenty of other tables available—why are they sitting right next to us? Weirdoes.” Jason smirked, acknowledging that he understood her look.
They locked eyes. They grinned at each other. They used to communicate like this all the time. A special telepathic language only the two of them shared. It separated them from the rest of the world. It bonded them. It made them feel safe. It made them feel whole. They hadn’t communicated like that in… they couldn’t remember how long. It felt good to have that exchange. It felt good to know their connection to each other hadn’t been completely severed by years of growing resentment. By years of new challenges. By years of individual evolution. Perhaps there was still enough good between them, enough love underneath the black mold to keep their marriage together—to bring them back to each other.
This idea of perhaps was shared as they maintained eye contact. And Sara carefully stretched her hand out to Jason. He carefully stretched his to her. Their fingers intertwined with caution. Sara didn’t even mind that Jason managed to smear a little guacamole from his finger onto hers. They both almost giggled about it. Were they going to be okay? Maybe they were going to be okay.
One of the thirtysomethings was talking loudly. Enough to just about drown out the Train song, which Sara and Jason greatly appreciated. He struck them as the kind of guy who always spoke at a volume that was too loud, and that he rarely let others have a chance to contribute to the conversation. “Thing is, man, I dunno, you know? Like, women are tricky. Marriage is weird. Women are, you know… fucking women, man.”
His nonsense broke the delicate connection Sara and Jason were so desperately holding on to. Sara returned to picking at her burrito bowl. Jason took another huge bite of his handheld. In fairness, Sara thought, Jason wasn’t a lost cause. When they first got together, he ate his burritos with a knife and fork. An approach she found maniacal. She teased him about it for years. Maybe it was months. She couldn’t remember. Point is, he conceded. The thing was, Sara didn’t really care. She found it annoyingly charming. One of those idiosyncrasies that made Jason her Jason. But perhaps that was the problem. He’d changed so much—for better or worse—that he was no longer her Jason. He was just this Jason Benning guy. And she’d changed, too. She was now Sara Benning. The professional functional alcoholic. The mean, impatient person who couldn’t stand to live with her stoned, impatient husband. The person she vowed to stay with… for better or worse.
And Train played. And the guy kept talking. “Thing is, man… if it weren’t for divorce, I’d have student loans.”
Hearing this, Jason choke-laughed. Sara thought he was laughing at the idiot. Instead, Jason had been struck violently by a realization.
Sometimes, when they fought, they fought about money. His weed. Her shopping. His OnlyFans. Her trips. But he had one up on her. He was also paying half of her student loans. A debt he, himself, did not accrue. A debt his rich parents did not help with. A debt that, in a way, planted the seed for everything that was wrong with their marriage. Because if she hadn’t gotten such a great education, maybe she wouldn’t have been hired away from St. Joseph. And maybe there wouldn’t have been that break. And maybe they would have lived a long, happy life as the power couple in a small town with a killer lake house not too far away. Jason would have loved that.
When they got married, they pooled all their finances together. A Jackson Pollock painting of dollars and cents. He knew she carried all of the financial weight when he was out of work. And they always managed to earn about the same salary. Save for a few grand here or there between them with raises and promotions and new jobs. But the jackass at the table next to them had a point.
He was tired of dragging half her load. Her financial choices and responsibilities. Her alcoholism. And he knew she was tired of his drug abuse and laziness and porn addiction.
“Sara… Let’s… Let’s make this easier on ourselves. Let’s…” He was convinced. His mind was made up. His body felt lighter, his head felt clearer, but he couldn’t bring himself to say the words.
Sara’s eyes welled up. She forced a smile. “You will always be my…”
“I know.”
“I think we’ve…”
“We had a really, really good run, Sara. If you weigh the good and the bad—”
“The bad outweighs the good.”
“By a lot.”
“A lot.”
They reached out to take each other’s hands again. And sat there, quietly locked in each other’s eyes, reliving the memories, reliving the futures they’d talked about but never actually lived. And they both cried, comfortably and calmly. They knew that a hard road of sadness and anger and confusion and relief and regret was ahead of them. But the hard part was over. The decision was made. Really, it had been made months ago, they just needed Chipotle to reveal it to them.
Neither could take another bite of their food. And they knew neither of them would ever eat at Chipotle ever again.
And then the guy next to them said, “But if it weren’t for marriage, I’d never have known what it was like to really be happy.”
Sara and Jason laughed. They smiled at each other. They squeezed the other’s hand.
“Let go home,” Sara said.
“I’ll call my dad’s lawyer in the morning,” Jason said.
“Perfect.”
David Himmel is the author of the books Hope Idiotic, The Last DJ, and A Camp Story. An award-winning journalist, he has contributed to several news outlets including POLITICO and The Atlantic. Leader of his two sons and their dog, he's a sailor who does not spend enough time on his boat. Check out his Substack, Autopsy, a collection of musings that dissect our foibles, our wins, our regrets, and our ways forward.
