Modern Love The Podcast is supported by...

From the New York Times and WBUR Boston, this is Modern Love.

Stories of Love, loss and redemption.

I'm your host, Megna Chakrabardi.

Within Marriage is a promise.

To stay committed to a spouse through all the changes that can happen in a lifetime.

But for Diane Daniel, those changes went further than she ever imagined.

And out, who recently won an Emmy for her performance in Hulu's drama The Handmaid's Tale, reads Diane's essay,

My Husband is Now My Wife.

The alarm went off at 4 a.m. on a Tuesday.

My husband and I had been told to arrive two hours early as if for a flight.

My eyelids were puffy from the night before when he had held me and said he was sorry.

So very sorry.

I'd wet without warning after dinner because I would not see his face again.

His perfectly average face with a sizable nose and weak chin.

The face I'd held and kissed and been happy to greet for eight years.

Do you still have your wedding ring on I asked? They said to take it off.

We'd married in our 40s both for the first time.

Our independent lives blending seamlessly.

Oops, yes.

He twisted the ring off his slender finger and I placed it in a beaded box on my dresser.

We'd bought the box in Bali, one of our many adventures.

...