They were still at an easy distance from each other; always at the end of the day that took them away, each into his own activity, it was a little while before they could drift into the private harbour of their relationship again. They had married to share life; but, of course, there was no getting out of it, even by marriage : each must live his life for himself. Jessie sometimes thought, without blame or a sense of having been deluded, of the year they weren’t married, when, she now understood, they had splendidly stopped living; that was what it amounted to—to celebrate love, you must do no work, see no friends, ignore obligations.
…
An excerpt from Nadine Gordimer’s novel, An Occasion for Loving.
