This is a true story. It’s about several things: A tumultuous marriage, a software start-up, a middle-aged woman, and how she navigates through a period in her life in a not-so-happy marriage to a man with ADD. His blind—but not very effective—endless efforts to make his software business idea a success, even at the risk of losing his marriage, causes long term financial stress and she begins to question his ability to sell anything, let alone perform as a CEO he imagines himself to be. As he ignores the profound distress he is causing, she begins to lose respect and love for him. Financial struggles dog them for many years, and the relationship deteriorates. She realizes there is nothing more she can do for her husband and the marriage.

She longs for a different life and the opportunity to fulfill a long-suppressed desire to travel and express her adventurous, independent self.

This is also a story about choosing differently. Choosing to get off the roller-coaster, and try to create a different life for herself in which she chooses to react differently, and consciously, to the triggers created by a relationship full of stress and disappointment.

I hope it won’t be viewed as a negative story, a laundry list of complaints or dumping on my husband now that the marriage is ending. I don’t intend that at all. Our life together wasn’t unhappy and difficult all the time. There are plenty of good memories and a lot of love. What I write about here are the parts that helped illuminate why I began to feel the things I did and began to do the things I’m doing. The teaching parts.

Every relationship has its ups and downs, good and bad, good times and difficult times: I know that. I understand and embrace commitment to a relationship. That’s important. I’m a one-man woman and I don’t give up easily. Sometimes, no matter what you do or want, when the difficult times go on and on—and, little by little, the connection erodes—relationships end of their own accord. At some point, you realize there’s no going back, and you have to move on.

This story is about the end, and the moving on.