Everyone has heard the saying, “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.” We all know those couples. We’ll call them the Perfects. They live in a beautiful home in the suburbs. The house is surrounded by a manicured lawn on which well-behaved children play cooperatively. Mom and Dad emerge from the house smiling, hand in hand, to call in the children for dinner, which we assume is not only delicious but nutritionally balanced. The cherubs run to their beaming parents tripping over each other while somehow not getting a single grass stain on their denim-clad knees. After a group hug, they head through their front door on which hangs a “Home Sweet Home” sign. Then the door closes behind them.

Imagine the shock that tears through the neighborhood when the news breaks: The Perfects are getting divorced! How can that be? They’re perfect!

That’s the thing. They’re not.

Tessa and Ken, the main characters in my debut novel A Week of Warm Weather, appear to be such a couple. They are in love. Ken dotes on Tessa and their baby daughter. He has just opened his own dental practice. Tessa has happily chosen to put her career on hold to care for the baby. Ken opens every door and pulls out every chair for his wife. On walks with the baby, they hold hands. They appear to have the perfect marriage. The operative word is “appear.”

So how does an author write the unraveling of what appears to be a perfect marriage? The first paragraph in this post ends with the door closing behind the Perfects. Their friends, neighbors, and even family members don’t have any idea what goes on behind that door. When such a couple is in a fiction novel, sometimes the author lets the reader know from the beginning it is all smoke and mirrors, and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes, as in A Week of Warm Weather, the reader knows the truth, but the other characters do not. In my case, the trick was to create ancillary characters who move the story arc along as key players in scenes that reveal there is trouble in paradise. Tessa’s family members, Ken’s staff, Sal’s customers, and Tessa and Ken’s friends all contribute to the drip, drip, drip that becomes the deluge.

Furthermore, when writing Tessa, I knew readers would be frustrated with her. I imagined them yelling, “Leave that a-hole!! Don’t you see he’s manipulating you??” In my master’s program in fiction writing, a professor advised us to understand our characters’ pain points before we wrote a single word. Tessa’s pain is fear of abandonment and all that accompanies it—codependency, anxiety, low self-esteem (to name a few). So, when I was writing her in a “perfect” marriage, her pain points drove her words and actions toward not just Ken, but her family and friends.

At first, Tessa’s family and friends are baffled by her evolving ire toward Ken. The “perfection” secondary characters observe demonstrates to the reader how the marriage appears to those in the couple’s orbit. Then as the story unfolds, I drop breadcrumbs that suggest to the other characters that all is not well. Ken inexplicably disappears for hours—sometimes a whole day—at a time. Tessa rebuffs gifts and sweet gestures from Ken. The thing is, Tessa and Ken seem so perfect that at first their family and friends dismiss incidents that would raise eyebrows and suspicions if they happened to a less stable couple. That adds to the shock and awe when it all blows up.

Of course, most marriages do not spontaneously combust; rather, they unravel a little bit at a time, and that is key when writing a marriage’s downfall. Think of it this way: Envision a beautiful house. Its exterior is an appealing balance of stucco, brick, and stone. It has two stories and a wraparound porch. The windows are flanked by shutters flawlessly painted to a glossy finish. It’s the envy of everyone in the neighborhood. Every couple who strolls past it admires its beauty and charm. They all wish they had a house like that. What they don’t know is that the contractor poured the foundation when the temperatures were too cold. This causes the frozen ground to expand and eventually change its support capability. The house will settle as the ground thaws. Over time, inside, cracks appear in the drywall and crown molding pulls away from the ceilings.

When a couple falsely projects a happy marriage, a similar situation occurs. Just like the house that looks perfect on the exterior, if the foundation is not strong, problems arise. People who walk by or even enter the house can’t see the underlying trouble. Those who inhabit the house camouflage the fissures. They spackle over the cracks and paint over the imperfections. No one is the wiser.

Until they are.

In Tessa and Ken’s “perfect marriage” scenario, Ken’s behavior causes the fissures that Tessa furiously spackles over. At first she is successful at hiding Ken’s deceit and manipulation. It works for a while, but eventually her close family figures out that something is off. Tessa, desperate to keep her marriage intact, makes it her life’s work to cover up the truth. Thus, a vicious cycle is born: Ken behaves badly, people begin asking questions, Tessa lies to cover up for Ken, Ken is emboldened to behave worse, people ask more questions, Tessa amps up the lies. Rinse. Repeat.

Drip, drip, drip.

Readers of women’s fiction expect to accompany a character on an emotional journey. I wrote Tessa as a flawed woman readers can relate to. Her tolerance of her husband’s behavior, though frustrating to the reader, demonstrates the effects of her childhood trauma on her adult self. She doesn’t feel worthy of love; she believes she deserves Ken’s abuse. The slow, excruciating unraveling of Tessa and Ken’s marriage—emphasized by Tessa’s inner conflict and constant excuses to give Ken one more chance—takes the reader on a relatable ride with a woman who has to realize we are no good to anyone else if we don’t take care of ourselves.

Good luck with your writing endeavors. Maybe your characters are living lives that are “too good to be true.” How will you tug on the string that begins the unraveling?