I took a deep breath, meeting their eyes with a calm I didn’t know I possessed. “I’ve known for a while that our marriage was… strained. We’ve been living as roommates rather than partners. This—” I waved a hand between him and Lisa, “—is the symptom, not the cause.”

Lisa looked down, her cheeks flushed with shame, but I wasn’t here to belittle her. She was a part of this narrative now, whether she liked it or not. And truthfully, my issue wasn’t with her.

“I’m not angry,” I continued, “because I stopped holding onto the illusion of ‘us’ a long time ago. We’ve been living in parallel worlds, Matt, and it’s time we acknowledged that.”