The ceremony was the easy part. That’s the whole damn thing right there. Before the fight, before the words, before the evidence your logical mind can neatly stack up like a prosecutor making a case, your body knows. It’s a knowing in the bones, a vibration in the blood. A truth that lands in your gut with the dull thud of a heavy stone. The relationship is sick. The connection is fractured. The frequency is off. But we are experts at denial. Masters of the cognitive override. We tell ourselves stories. *“He’s just stressed at work.” “She didn’t mean it like that.” “It’s just a rough patch.”* We negotiate with reality, trying to bargain our way back to a peace that was never really there. We use our brilliant minds to build elaborate cages around a wild, inconvenient truth. And all the while, the body keeps the score. It doesn’t lie. It can’t. Your jaw is clenched when you watch TV together. Your breath is a shallow, tight little thing when you hear their car pull into the driveway. There’s a cold dread that pools in your stomach when their name flashes on your phone. You feel a flinch, a