The news caught me by surprise.

“Ryan and Marisa are getting divorced,” my wife said to me, the kind of bombshell that somehow naturally juxtaposes with a banal Tuesday evening task – washing dishes, in this case – where you learn something that stops you in your tracks.

Marisa is one of my wife’s oldest friends. She was her matron of honor at our wedding and, despite the hundreds of miles that separate us, our families have spent lots of time together. I’m immediately saddened by this turn of events, knowing that things won’t be the same, even though the impact on our lives will be minimal.

It’s not just the fact they’re getting divorced that sends shockwaves through our house. It’s the fact that this marks the first time any one of our friends has gotten divorced. It sounds so adult, so forbidden, and gives me pause to think. My brother-in-law, since remarried, divorced before I met my wife and my in-laws have been engaged in a drawn-out split for years, but we’ve never witnessed a divorce between contemporaries during the course of our own marriage.

Marisa and Ryan have two kids, close in age to our two children, and I wonder how this will affect them. I race through my index of memories and knowledge to try and figure out what went wrong. Most importantly, I take stock of my own marriage. My wife will get the full scoop during a long phone call with Marisa some days later and relay them to me, satisfying my own morbid curiosity.

After I’m up to speed, we get into an unexpectedly reflective conversation about our own union. We marvel matter-of-factly how we get along and that the one consistent source of friction between us is the fact that she’s not as organized as I am. In a house with two little boys, I’m constantly begging to clean up, a never-ending race that occasionally results in elevated voices, the type of argument that no doubt takes place between many husbands and wives juggling work and personal lives where anyone can very easily lose sight of how much his or her partner is doing to keep things running smoothly. But if this is the worst of it, then we have won and I will continue to count my blessings.

By and large, we are good. Parenthood is tough. So is marriage. Strange, but the news about the divorce made us look at things and assess where we are. I’m sure more fights lie ahead. They always do because the couple that doesn’t argue doesn’t exist. And I’m OK with fighting. I’m more OK knowing that we’re OK, though.

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