The most dangerous phase of any long marriage isn’t the first year or the seven-year mark — it’s the year after the kids leave, when two people who have been co-parenting for two decades have to suddenly remember how to be two people who chose each other, and most couples have forgotten what that looks like and aren’t sure they’d choose again
When the last child leaves home, forty-year marriages face their greatest test: two people who've spent decades perfecting the business of co-parenting suddenly sit across from each other at silent dinner tables, realizing they've become polite strangers who must now decide if th…