Chapter 1: Sarah and Mike

Sarah was a nice woman who lived in a nice little country town named Dixon, Missouri. She’d been married to a local mechanic named Mike for 6 years now, and things were getting quite stressful.

See, living in a small town and being a young couple has certain… pressures. You need to vote the right way, you need to go to the right church, have normal hobbies, etc etc. Sarah was great at navigating these obstacles, being a Sunday school teacher with an online knitting business.

You see, Sarah was a highly organized, type A individual. She was a lean 110 pound machine that coped with her stress by keeping to a highly structured routine. She got up at the same time each day, 5am, and ran 2 miles around the block. Coming back, she had a premade meal of a smoothie with oats and did a quick yoga routine before showering and beginning her knitting for the day. At exactly 12 noon, she ate a carefully measured meal, and went on a walk for exactly one hour. She took a thirty minute nap, and began making dinner for Mike, who got home around 4. After eating dinner at exactly 6:30, she would read the bible for 30 minutes, taking quick notes while having a facial cream mask on her face. Finally, she would end her day with a 15 minute prayer and go soundly to sleep at 7:15 on the dot.

She kept this routine up.
Every

Single

Day.
After 2 years of this routine, Sarah added daily sex in between dinner and her afternoon shower to try and get pregnant. Despite numerous different positions and timing, her body just wouldn’t accept a baby. The stress of fertility began to wear on Sarah, and it started to eat at their relationship. Conversations became short, and the short time off that Mike had became filled with distant conversations that usually ended in an argument about how Mike’s lack of discipline or routine affected his sperm and her fertility.

One day, after Sarah told Matt that his lazy routine had cost her her child rearing years, Matt gave Sarah an ultimatum of therapy or divorce.

Realizing how she had hurt Mike, Sarah agreed to therapy.