As we argued, the space between us grew, until we couldn’t even see the other’s side

A decade ago, back when we were still considered a young couple, my husband and I had a tiny tiff.
I’m just putting that out there because a friend recently commented that frum essays are all filled with fluff and butterflies.
She emailed: No matter what happens, everyone ends up happy and laughing. Where’s the incessant frustration, the struggle, the fighting and tears… is everyone’s life really that picture perfect?
She has a point. I know that I personally hand-pluck which struggles to expose to very many thousands of readers. I mean… obviously. Of course life is messier then 700 polished words stuck on a page accompanied by a pretty graphic. In real life we can’t just edit out all the loose ends. But don’t we all stick a bouquet in front of the crack in the mirror and hide the stuffing in the couch with a throw pillow? Don’t we all pile layers of chiffon over our mistakes until they look more like dreams and less like reality? Yeah, okay, so maybe the veneer is detrimental, maybe being honest about our own mistakes could change someone’s world for the better, but… eh. Mistakes are ugly.
Fine. Fine. In all honesty it wasn’t quite a tiff, that little thing between my husband and I, it was a disagreement. We were in the car, our baby in the back. We were discussing something mundane that somehow snowballed. You know how it goes, all couples have disagreements.