Dear Polly,. When that marriage began to unravel after almost a decade, the disruption it caused to my framework of personal value sent me into a downward spiral. I left my grad program, went AWOL on an internship I had worked years to get, and wound up unemployed and alone in a shitty studio apartment in my hometown. Then I met a woman, and you can guess what happened next — two years later, I was married again. To our credit, this time around has been more emotionally healthy and better overall.