Marriage has a public face and a private reality. The public face is what you bring to dinner parties and social media — the partnership, the shared life, the love. The private reality is more complicated. The loneliness that can exist inside a committed relationship. The ways you've changed that you haven't told your partner. The version of yourself that only comes out when they're not watching.

Anonymous thoughts about marriage posted here are the ones that don't get said. Not because they're not real — because saying them out loud, to people who know you, changes things in ways you're not ready for.

This is where the private truth goes.