Leaving the First Marriage

This thread follows Cheryl Strayed / Sugar’s young marriage to her first husband from passionate companionship through the recognition that love alone cannot make staying right.

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A Young Marriage

A Young Marriage A Sudden Commitment Cheryl Strayed / Sugar meets her first husband shortly after turning nineteen and marries him before she turns twenty. He is her best friend, lover, and companion for books, music, politics, and travel. She loves him deeply, though she later understands that her feelings were not wholehearted in the way she wished they were. A Life Together Their relationship contains genuine warmth and shared interests. They build a domestic life together, including their cats, and make plans in the improvised manner of young people who have not yet learned how much a decision can shape the years ahead. The affection between them matters, but it does not settle the question of whether they should remain married. Cheryl Strayed / Sugar will spend years trying to honor that love while also listening to a persistent desire for a different life.

London Together

London Together A Struggling Life Abroad In London, Cheryl Strayed / Sugar is broke and technically homeless, taking an under-the-table job as a coffee girl. Her first husband shares the precarious life with her: they look for dropped coins on the streets, and he sometimes visits during her breaks. The Bundle on the Woman’s Head An older woman regularly talks with Cheryl Strayed / Sugar outside the accounting firm. When her husband finally sees the woman, he notices an enormous bundle of rags and blankets balanced on her head. The couple laugh together at how Cheryl Strayed / Sugar had somehow never mentioned this striking detail. The laughter opens into tears. Cheryl Strayed / Sugar senses that her failure to name what was plainly visible connects to her refusal to acknowledge that she no longer wants to stay married. The moment makes their intimacy real, but also reveals that companionship cannot answer every truth she needs to face.

The Word Go

The Word Go Love and Resistance Cheryl Strayed / Sugar loves her first husband and cannot imagine her life without him, yet a clear inner voice continues to say “go.” She worries that leaving will devastate him, that no one else will love her as well, and that she has no adequate explanation for wanting freedom. A Difficult Choice She tries to suppress the desire and to be good, but the contradiction grows more painful. Rather than making a clean decision, she eventually has sexual relationships outside the marriage, deepening the hurt and entanglement between them. Looking back, she recognizes that her reasons were many—grief, youth, incompatibility, and the demands of her writing—but they converged on one truth. She did not want to remain in that marriage at her core, even though other parts of her still did.

The Painful Separation

The Painful Separation A Break Made Messy Cheryl Strayed / Sugar confesses her sexual dalliances, and the couple begins the painful process of separating. She has not found a painless way out: her attempt to avoid hurting her husband has helped turn the ending into a longer and more damaging struggle. A Shared Grief The separation is not a contest between a villain and a victim. Both people are caught in the emotional consequences of a relationship that mattered, and Cheryl Strayed / Sugar experiences the divorce as the most excruciating decision she has made. Yet the pain does not make the decision wrong. She later understands that her first husband deserved a partner who did not remain while longing to leave. Ending the marriage is a painful form of honesty toward both of them.

A Kindness in Retrospect

A Kindness in Retrospect Seeing the First Marriage Again After marrying Mr. Sugar, Cheryl Strayed / Sugar sees her first marriage with more clarity. The two men share important qualities: both are kind, artistic, and connected to her love of books and the outdoors. This recognition does not mean the marriages were interchangeable. The Difference at the Center In her first marriage, Cheryl Strayed / Sugar felt she was fighting for her freedom, even when she and her husband were trying to solve problems together. With Mr. Sugar, she has never felt that same need to escape; their conflicts do not carry the same underlying refusal to stay. Her later understanding does not erase the love or the grief of the earlier relationship. It shows that a relationship can be meaningful and still end, and that leaving can become a kindness when it permits both people to seek a life they can truly inhabit.

At nineteen and twenty, when Cheryl Strayed / Sugar marries her first husband

At age twenty, during their stay in London

During the years when Cheryl Strayed / Sugar struggles to end the marriage

The year or so after Cheryl Strayed / Sugar confesses her affairs

Several years later, after Cheryl Strayed / Sugar has married Mr. Sugar