After fifty years of marriage, I never imagined I would be the one asking for a divorce. At seventy-five, most people cling to what remains, but I felt myself disappearing. Not because Charles had wronged me—he hadn’t—but because somewhere along the way, I had lost myself inside our shared life. We married young. He was gentle, steady, dependable. Together we built a life others admired: a warm home, traditions, laughter, decades of shared memories. But after retirement, while he leaned into routine, I began to feel trapped by it.
