Last night I finally watched Blue Valentine. Greg and I saw the first half of the movie last year—the week before we got married—and after figuring out that it depicts the demise of a marriage, we decided to save it until after our vows. Smart decision. But now I’m really glad we watched it.

Blue Valentine is absolutely heartbreaking, yet completely stunning. We see Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams, who, I shared a scene with on Dawson’s Creek) fall in love and forge a beautiful relationship, which somewhere down the line becomes contentious and full of derision.

The movie is so incredibly real. The dialogue, which was largely ad-libbed, is tangible. So are the petty fights that morph into emotional black holes—just like they can in a real relationship. We truly step into the inner sanctum of a marriage—the part that no one knows except you and your spouse—and we see that it’s rotting.

Halfway through the movie, I had a chilling realization: This is real, and it could happen to us if we’re not careful.

Blue Valentine juxtaposes the birth and death of a marriage. We see the birth of a tender relationship, flawed yet full of promise, and we see what it becomes. But we don’t see what happens in between—the bad habits that build to create this living creature of neediness, repression and disdain.  

And that’s where I think the lesson lies. It’s in the unseen time that lapses between the beginning and end of this marriage. It’s in the slow, tumorous growth of harmful tendencies that eventually develop into devastating routine.

“We’re not good together anymore, the way that we treat each other,” says Cindy during one of the final scenes. “You can’t stop. I can’t stop. I don’t know what else to do.”

After it was over, I crawled over to Greg with tears streaming down my face and said, “Please don’t let that happen to us.”

Although Greg declared his hatred for Blue Valentine, he couldn’t stop watching it. And I think his dislike was based in the fact that it scared us both.

Our marriage is in its infancy, but as we build the foundation of a lifelong relationship, we need to watch out for harmful tendencies that become patterns and form hazardous cracks in that foundation. The sighs that, over the years, become screams. The neediness that leads the other spouse to feel suffocation, resentment and, eventually, scorn.  The silly, meaningless fights that whittle away at a friendship.

Blue Valentine depicts the beginning and the end of a marriage, but the true catalysts are in the middle—and so are we.  Time to make it count.

Dear North Carolina Friends,

You’ve got a big decision to make tomorrow. Don’t be fooled into thinking that Amendment One somehow protects the institution of marriage. Same-sex marriage is already illegal in North Carolina and defined as being between one man and one woman. Amendment One takes this notion to a new and despicable level by not only constitutionally banning same-sex marriage, but ending legal recognition of any same-sex “domestic legal union” such as civil unions or domestic partnerships.

Amendment One is not about defending marriage. It’s about maliciously stripping existing rights from those who are not even married in the first place.

Think of the children whose parents are gay. Think of the person who wants to be with his or her spouse in the ICU. Think before you vote for Amendment One.