I have counseled couples who survived infidelity, bankruptcy, the death of a child. They are not happy all the time. They are furious, grief-stricken, exhausted. But they stay. They repair. They choose each other on the days when “happiness” feels like a cruel joke. The marriages that last are not the happiest. They are the ones that have learned to fight well, to forgive poorly (but repeatedly), and to hold two opposing truths at once: I love you, and right now I don’t like you very much.

After two decades of listening to the worst of what humans can do to each other—betrayal, contempt, stonewalling, cruelty—I still believe. Not in fairy tales. Not in soulmates. I believe in the radical, unglamorous act of staying and repairing. I believe in two people who have seen each other vomit from chemotherapy, fail at careers, lose parents, lose tempers, lose their minds—and still turn toward each other in the dark.

You haven’t had a real conversation in six months. You’re sleeping in separate rooms because of snoring, not hatred. You have stopped dating, stopped laughing, stopped asking each other interesting questions. And you think this means the marriage is over. It isn’t. It means you have neglected the garden. A week away without children, a rule to put phones in a basket, a single honest conversation that starts with “I miss you”—these things can resurrect a marriage that feels like a corpse. Try those first. Then call a lawyer.

Marriage is not a happiness machine. It is a forge. It will break you open. And if you let it, it will teach you who you really are. That is my confession. That is the only truth worth sitting in this chair for.