Writing about health and psychology for a living only made our precarious relationship more awkward. So I decided to try and salvage our faltering marriage by using every resource I could think of: for over a year, I plunged into research, consulted countless experts, divvied up chores with the help of time management experts and brought (well, dragged) my husband to couples therapy. The result was an upward spiral: when Tom began to help me out, I was happier, which in turn made him happier. When we learned to disagree calmly, our child grew calmer.

These days, of course we still squabble—how annoying would we be if we never fought again?—but with effort, we now work out issues like grown-ups. And I feel slightly less shame about our fighting as friends and family have come forward and confessed similar problems in their own marriages. One whose marriage I envied told me, “oh, I hated John until our son started school.” Another said that she and her husband had all but stopped talking to each other for the first two years after their twins were born. Two years? I had been none the wiser.