After I Do

“I had never understood the concept of making love before. It seemed cheesy and dramatic. But I got it then. It isn’t just about the movement. It’s about the way your heart swells when he gets close. The way his breath feels like a warm fire. It’s about the fact that your brain shuts down and your heart takes over. I cared about nothing but the feel of him, the smell of him, the taste of him. I wanted more of him.”

The passionate tone that infuses this use of figurative and descriptive language captures the young Lauren’s emotional experience when she has sex with Ryan for the first time. She likens their physical connection to a fire, illustrating the passion between them when they first begin their relationship. Significantly, this initial intensity will soon provide a sharp contrast with the various ways in which their relationship has cooled and soured in subsequent years.

“It got bad enough that I started crying; he got upset enough that his face turned red. And then, before we knew it, we were at the part where we both admitted we were wrong and begged each other’s forgiveness with a passion unlike anything since the last time we’d fought. That was always the way it was with us. The I love yous and I’m sorrys, the I’ll never do that agains and the I don’t know what I’d do without yous always eclipsed the thing we were fighting about in that place.”

Lauren’s reflective tone illustrates her depth of character. She is processing her and Ryan’s specific manner of relating to one another, and she also acknowledges the emotional extremes and pivots that they often experience amidst their conflicts. This moment foreshadows the lessons that she will learn about the entanglement of love, hatred, disappointment, and joy during her separation from Ryan.

“And yet somehow during this entire hike, there were groups of people ahead of us and behind us who seemed to be doing just fine. There were even people coming down the mountain with smiles on their faces, proud of themselves for making it up there. I wanted to grab their shirts and demand that they tell me what lay ahead. But what was the point? Maybe if I didn’t know what I was in for, I wouldn’t know to give up.”

Lauren’s description of her inner experience while hiking through Yosemite with Ryan acts as a metaphor for the couple’s relationship. She wants their connection to lean toward the smiling, happy version of love, but she is also trying to hold these joys in balance with the difficulties of her relationship. The images of the other happy couples therefore act as a contrast with her physical discomfort on the hike. The latter two lines, which use fragmentation, questions, and the conditional, also express her uncertainty about the future and her openness to learning.

“He smiled, evading me. For some reason, I liked it better not knowing. He had made the impossible possible. And I liked that I didn’t know his secret. It made me think that maybe other impossible things were possible. That maybe all I needed was to want it badly enough, and I really could have it.”

Lauren and Ryan’s ability to secure the Hancock Park house represents the ultimate stability, beauty, and joy of their relationship. Lauren doesn’t fully understand how Ryan obtained the house, but she chooses to trust and believe him. Her reflections on the house foreshadow the conclusions that she will draw about the complexity of love and her role in her marriage.

“Sometimes people do things because they are furious or because they are upset or because they are out for blood. And those things can hurt. But what hurts the most is when someone does something out of apathy. They don’t care about you the way they said they did back in college. They don’t care about you the way they promised to when you got married. They don’t care about you at all. And because there is just the tiniest part of me that still cares, and because his not caring enrages that tiny part of me, I do something I have never done before. I do something I never thought I would ever do. I do something that, even as I’m doing it, I can’t believe is actually happening.”

Immersed in the bitterness of her angry reflections on her crumbling marriage, Lauren’s use of anaphora, repetition, and fragmentation captures her intense emotional state. As she analyzes her latest fight with Ryan, her first-person narration provides a window into her private emotional experiences, and her stylistic choices convey the depths of her frustration and desperation.

“I go home on Sunday night at seven o’clock, the time that Ryan and I agreed on. I knew he would be gone. That was the whole point. But as I open the door to my empty house, the fact that he is gone really hits me. I am alone. My house looks as if I was robbed. Ryan didn’t take anything that we hadn’t discussed ahead of time, and yet it feels as if he has taken everything we owned. Sure, the major furniture is there, but where are the DVDs? Where is the bookshelf? Where is the map of Los Angeles that we had mounted and framed? It is all gone.”

Lauren’s detailed description of her living space conveys the house’s symbolic significance to her character and story. Lauren sees her home as an extension of her marital relationship, and because certain items are missing, she becomes overwhelmed by Ryan’s absence and laments her own loneliness.

“I look at the bed with fresh eyes. I don’t even like floral patterns. What am I doing? I like blue. I like yellow. I like green. I don’t like pink. I have never, in my life, liked pink. This ‘freedom’ quickly starts to feel like such a small thing. This is what I was excited about? Buying a floral blanket? Wearing saggy underwear?”

Lauren’s use of derisive questions conveys her deep sense of frustration as she finds herself trying to forge meaning and purpose from empty pursuits such as redecorating certain aspects of her house. She wants to embrace her newly single life, but at this point in the narrative, she has no idea of how best to proceed. She is also coming to terms with who she is as a person in the context of her separation. Her stylistic choices therefore capture her desire to understand herself and to find her footing amidst the disorientation of her altered circumstances.

“But I can see that it’s not going to be that easy. Change, at least in my life, is more often than not a slow and steady stream. It’s not an avalanche. It’s more of a snowball effect. I probably shouldn’t pontificate about my life using winter metaphors. I’ve only seen real snow three times.”

Lauren’s use of figurative language and metaphor conveys her desire to make sense of her new life circumstances. She compares her experience to a “stream,” an “avalanche,” and a “snowball” because her current misfortunes feel like an inexorable force of nature—something that is happening to her rather than something that she can control. Although she has considerable experience with the natural world, snow is beyond her realm of experience, and this is also true of her separation from Ryan.

“‘But the way I see it,’ she continues, ‘your love life should bring you love. If it doesn’t, no matter how hard you try, if you are honest and fair and good, and you decide it’s over and you need to go find love somewhere else, then… what more can the world ask of you?’”

Leslie’s use of simple, familiar language in this scene creates an open, honest tone, and it is clear that she is setting all forms of judgment aside in an effort to truly reach Lauren. Leslie is communicating so because she wants Lauren to know that she loves and understands her, no matter what her daughter decides. For this reason, she employs colloquial diction and avoids veiling her meaning with figurative language.

“He’s going to kiss someone else, if he hasn’t already. He’s going to touch her. He’s going to want her in a way that he no longer wants me. He’s going to tell her things he never told me. He’s going to lie there next to her, feeling satisfied and happy. She’s going to remind him of how good it can feel to be with a woman. And while all of this is happening, he’s not going to be thinking about me at all. And there’s not a thing I can do to stop it.”

Lauren’s use of anaphora and the future tense conveys her growing despair about her lack of control when it comes to Ryan’s personal journey of self-discovery. She suddenly realizes that being apart from Ryan means accepting the fact that he will have profound new experiences without her. Her use of anaphora creates an insistent tone, illustrating her attempt to reconcile with these unwelcome truths.

“He hates me as much as he loves me. I hate these letters as much as I love them. The pain and the joy are locked together, tightly bound. I read the letters over and over again, hoping to separate one from the other, hoping to discern whether love or hate wins out in the end. But it’s like pulling on the ends of a finger trap. The more I try, the tighter they cling to each other.”

By invoking the simile of the finger trap, Lauren frustratedly conveys the interwoven opposites—love and hate, pain and joy—that characterize her current understanding of her faltering relationship with Ryan. This passage therefore illustrates her vain attempts to make sense of her tangled emotions upon reading Ryan’s email drafts. Most notably, she is trying to reconcile the dichotomies in her relationship and gain a firmer understanding of love in general.

“If you’re looking for reasons why our sex life was an unmitigated disaster, maybe you should consider the fact that you haven’t put in a modicum of effort since, I don’t know, senior year of college. Do you even understand how women experience pleasure? Because it’s not through relentless, rhythm-less pounding.”

Lauren’s use of direct, explicit language in her email draft to Ryan illustrates her desire to be seen and heard on the topic of sexual pleasure: something that neither of them has clearly discussed during their time together. Caught up in her unspoken frustrations, she now employs conversational diction and blunt wording because she is trying to forge a new sense of understanding with Ryan despite the associated risks. This moment marks a turning point in her development because she is claiming her experience in writing for the first time.

“I don’t actually have any idea. I have no evidence whatsoever. I just choose to believe in him. And for a second, I understand why everyone thinks my marriage will be OK. They don’t have any evidence. They just choose to believe in me.”

Lauren’s conversation with her brother Charlie grants her a new degree of insight into her relationship with Ryan. By connecting with Charlie on a vulnerable level, Lauren is inspired to be more honest with herself about the current state of her marriage. In this moment, she creates a parallel between herself and Charlie that clarifies her marital complications.

“I don’t know why Ryan and I are different. I just know that it’s OK that we are. Because I don’t want to go home tonight and work hard at being nice to somebody. I just don’t feel like it right now. I like that I get to go home and do whatever I want. I get to watch what I want on TV. I get to take a really long shower. I get to order Venezuelan food. Thumper and I will get into bed around midnight, and we will sleep soundly, a luxurious amount of room between us in our bed. And I think if you like your evening plans, you’re not allowed to regret what led you to them. I think that should be a rule.”

In this passage, Lauren’s plain language creates a blunt and decisive tone, and she remains entirely unapologetic in the admission that she enjoys her current level of freedom and solitude. By learning to revel in the benefits of living alone, she invests herself fully in the emotional journey of this trial separation, and in this moment, the narrative suggests that she may find her current circumstances to be preferable.

“It’s the first time I’ve told someone the uglier truths about how much it hurts. It’s the first time someone has been able to tell me they hurt, too. It is comforting when you share your pain with someone, and they say, ‘I can’t even begin to understand how difficult that must be.’ But it is better when they can say, ‘I understand completely.’”

Lauren’s newfound connection with David helps her to navigate her separation from Ryan. Lauren is indeed close with her family members, but she and David share much deeper parallels in their personal lives, and their mutual empathy allows them to provide each other with a level of understanding that becomes its own form of healing. Conversing with David grants Lauren the freedom to be honest with someone else about her feelings, and she therefore uncovers the hidden truths about herself.

“Well, I have missed him far more than I ever realized I would. When he left, I thought I wasn’t in love with him anymore, but I didn’t realize just how much I did still love him. I do still love him. The minute he left, I felt the hole in my life that he filled. I couldn’t have done that without missing him, without losing him.”

Lauren’s ability to articulate her feelings about the separation to her grandmother illustrates the degree to which she has embraced her personal development. As she puts her experience into words, she claims her voice and establishes her right to articulate her authentic emotions. This moment marks a turning point in The Search for Freedom and Personal Growth and conveys The Impact of Marital Separation on Personal Identity.

“‘Oh, my God!’ I am yelling. Or maybe I’m not, I don’t know. ‘Oh, my God!’ Oh, my god. Oh, my god. God, yes. Oh, God. Oh. God. Oh. God. Oh. God. Oh. God. Oh. God. Oh God. Oh God. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. YES. And then I fall on top of him. And he thanks me as he catches his breath. And he says, ‘I needed that.’ And I say, ‘Me, too.’”

As Lauren and David indulge their desire to have sex, the narrative uses frantically intense repetition and fragmentation to convey the immediacy of the act and the transformative nature of Lauren’s experience. Additionally, the deliberately rhythmic language mirrors both the physicality and the revelatory nature of their intimacy without requiring explicit descriptions of the moment.

“Even separated from my husband, I am still preoccupied with the opposite sex. Maybe not all the time. But still. On some level, my love life is a defining factor in my life. I’ve never been a person who had a career passion, really. I like my job at Occidental in part because it affords me a life outside of work that I really enjoy. I make enough money to have the things I need and want. I have time to spend with my family and, in the past, with Ryan. Love is a big part of who I am. Is that OK? I wonder. Is it supposed to be that way?”

Lauren’s reflective tone in this passage conveys just how profoundly her outlook has changed since the start of her separation from Ryan. Her frequent rhetorical questions and musing tone indicate that she is becoming more willing to analyze her own actions and emotions and reinterpret them in order to gain a more mature understanding of her connections to others.

“I want romance in my life. That’s what I want. And I don’t need anything else from a man. I’ve lived my whole life, or, I guess, my life since you guys were little, dating for fun. If the romance dies, I want to be able to leave, is what I’m saying. I want to be able to have that feeling again with someone else. It’s how I’ve been living my life for a long time. It works.”

In this passage, Leslie’s open descriptions of her outlook on romance teach Lauren about The Evolution of Love and Intimacy. Leslie’s conversational approach conveys her willingness to show vulnerability with her daughter, and because Leslie makes it a point to display her gentle candor, Lauren is better able to apply her mother’s wisdom to her own marriage.

“But I wish we could talk about this. I wish we could have talked about this. There’s a lot to say, and you’re the only one to say it to. Part of me thinks if I saw you today, I’d fall in love with you all over again. And another part of me thinks that I would feel something entirely different. Better, even. Because you’re not just the girl I’m infatuated with, you’re not the girl I just met. You’re you. You’re me.”

Ryan’s use of direct language captures his desire to make amends with Lauren. In his email drafts, he finds a safe forum that allows him to communicate openly and honestly, without fear of judgment or recrimination. His pained, plaintive tone in this passage indicates how deeply his marital problems are affecting him, and he also shows that, like Lauren, he has had the chance to reexamine his assumptions and redefine his understanding of their relationship.

“I try to think of myself in a similar position, but the truth is, I can’t. I don’t know Natalie all that well. She will be a sister to me one day, but that takes time. It takes history and shared experiences. We don’t have that yet. And she’s the closest I’ve come. I was never all that close with Ryan’s family, so I don’t miss them. I don’t know how I’d feel if I was Charlie in this situation. I’ve never been Charlie in this situation. And maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I’m so very much me in this situation that I cannot see anyone else or anything else. And maybe I should take that as a sign that I might be wrong. That is, of course, most often the reason people are wrong when they are wrong, isn’t it? When they can’t understand anything but their own point of view?”

Lauren’s familial relationships teach her about empathy and help her to understand The Evolution of Love and Intimacy. By talking to Charlie about his connection with Ryan, Lauren reaches a new level of understanding in her own personal growth journey. She is trying to forge parallels between her experience and that of her brother, and her efforts capture her humility and intense desire to change.

“I know I will get through this, even though it will be hard. It will feel impossible, and yet I will do it. I know that. But the voice shouting in my ear, the feeling pulling at my heart and constricting my chest, says that it would be easier if Ryan were here. It would just be that little bit easier to have him by my side. Maybe it doesn’t matter if you need someone during the everyday moments of your life. Maybe what matters is that when you need someone, they are the one you need. Maybe needing someone isn’t about not being able to do it without them. Maybe needing someone is about it being easier if they are by your side.”

Lauren’s use of anaphora and repetition creates a determined, resolved tone as she struggles to come to terms with how she feels on her own and in Ryan’s presence. Ultimately, she is trying to reconcile these seemingly dichotomous experiences, and the challenges of her thought process are conveyed through the repetition of phrases such as “I know” and “Maybe.”

“When we finally do get control of ourselves, our eyes are wet, our heads are light. I start to sigh loudly, the way people do when they are recovering from fits of laughter. I try to get control of myself, like a pilot landing a plane, slow and steady, readying to hit solid ground. Except instead of feeling the world under my feet, I take off again at the last minute. My sighs turn into tears. Laughing and crying are so intrinsically tied together, spun of the same material, that it’s hard to tell one from the other sometimes. And it’s easier than you think to go from being so happy you could cry to so devastated you could laugh.”

The use of figurative language and descriptive detail in this passage conveys the emotional intensity of Lauren and Ryan’s reunion. Lauren compares their reconciliation to a plane landing and to touching ground, and these metaphors conjure notions of sudden stability after a long period of uncertainty, chaos, and change. The allusions to tying and spinning also summon a sense of entwinement, validating the enduring nature of Lauren and Ryan’s connection.