"It's a long story, full of sighs."

I made the mistake earlier of trying to call this the "full" story. I realize now that what I was calling "full" was really just me deciding that page 5 was a good stopping point. Of course it can't include every detail but from my point of view it is as complete as an account of a crumbling marriage could be in the given space.

People continuously ask me why Jenny and I are getting a divorce. What I have written below is how I saw things play out, but I know it certainly isn't the "full" story and doesn't include every sordid detail.

Despite contrary opinions, it is honest. Brute honesty is all I have had energy for lately. The brain/mouth filter that was functioning poorly while I was married has now been completely removed. I'm straight-piping it now. Loud and obnoxious, but I think that is the only way to roll when you've got nothing left to lose.

This is how I saw things play out and the key moments in the mutual decision as I saw them. Jenny might give you a different answer if you asked her the same question. I'm sure she would at least be kind enough to give you a shorter answer! ;)

I still love Jenny dearly. She is still the best thing that has ever happened to me. We are still best friends. We want to work together for as long as we live to raise our beautiful daughters as a team and always be there for them and each other in any way that we can.

But, the question remains; Does all of the above mean that we should do those things as husband and wife?

Since April 24, 2004, I have moved Jenny all over the place. We lived in Florida, Indiana, Texas, and all over Utah. She even spent the better part of a month living in a cow pasture in Wyoming so that I could try writing for a newspaper. We have gone from one side of the religious spectrum to the other. We have fluctuated wildly in so many aspects of our lives – financially, emotionally, physically, sexually, spiritually… the list goes on and on.

Jenny is like a glassy lake at dawn. She is a natural nester and the embodiment of patience. She is a giver and always aims to please. She is very hard not to love. She is amazing.

I am chaos personified. I am a nomad, an adventurer, a cultivator of crazy ideas and unrealistic schemes.

In our clashing, we somehow fit. People talk about how opposites attract, and that may have been the case. I may have provided Jenny with an excitement that she needed and she has worked her ass off every day of our relationship to keep my feet on the ground.

I relied on her for everything. I made her take the responsibility of being my voice of reason. I let my daydreams carry me into the clouds without a second thought and always left her tugging the rope to bring me back to earth. The fact that I didn't realize I was doing all of that until now does not change the toll it took on her. In fact, it is barely more than a shitty consolation prize.

I was Phillip, the hyper-hypo. Jenny was my harness. Or better yet, my Jungle Gym, considering how often I dragged her around. Our marriage was the harness.

Do I think I am to “blame” for the demise of our marriage? Yes and no. I really did try. In fact, I always kept her at the very top of my priority list. I wrote her a book. I tattooed her name on my back. I never imagined life without her. We were always faithful to each other. We rarely fought. At times, we were the couple everyone else wanted to be. Our relationship made other people jealous. We were incredible together.

A while ago I was driving to work, still half asleep. It was about 6:50 in the morning and I was running late… again. For some reason, I felt very compelled to take the Beck Street exit. I almost always take 600 North into downtown. I don’t know why I felt that need. I don’t know who or what was responsible for it. God, intuition, the universe, the devil… the damned flying spaghetti monster, who knows? Who cares? Does it really even matter at this point?

I don’t think so.

I also almost always remember to wear my seatbelt, at least on the freeway. That morning I didn’t. I was speeding, doing over 50 mph on Beck Street and reaching into the back seat to pull a lemonade Rockstar out of the box I had back there.

When I turned to look back at the road, I was face to face with a Tesoro semi that was barreling diagonally across all 4 lanes into oncoming traffic. He was so far over that I my only option was to swerve left. We were mere inches apart. I was amazed that I even kept my mirror.

I popped out behind the trailer to find myself in the far oncoming lane and face to face with another car. That time I went right, but there was another in that lane so I had to come back left. I bounced over the curb and ended up on the lawn by the old museum there. The whole thing was over in a matter of seconds. There were no accidents. When I was able to peel my fingers from the wheel and look around, the semi and two other cars were gone.

I got ahold of myself and backed the Civic onto the road and went to work.

I knew that if I had hit the semi head-on I would have died. There really is no question about it. Even if I had been wearing a seatbelt, my survival chances would have been slim.

A few days later I started reading a little more about near death experiences and the emotional and psychological impact they can have. I understood the accounts from other people about feeling an intense mental clarity and love. I felt like every minute I had was a bonus minute. I felt a stronger, deeper love for Jenny than I think I ever have.

In that state of heightened mental clarity, I could also see how much chaos I had created for Jenny and the girls. I realized that I was always the one rocking the boat. I wondered if she could go back and talk to her 19-year-old self, would she encourage her to marry me?

The answer to that might still be yes. Despite the complications I created for Jenny, I do feel like I was good for her in many ways. I helped her realize how much she has to offer. I helped her stand up for herself and not get walked all over. I think I opened up her world a little bit – maybe not always for the better but she does have those experiences now.

Also, Emma and Abbi are incredible kids. We should both be very happy and grateful for the time we had together because of the beautiful children it generated.

The old adage, “If you love something set it free” was in my mind that morning after my close call.

So, I sat down and poured it onto paper - in much of the same way I am now, I suppose. I told her that I didn’t want anything to change. I told her that I loved her more than anything. I told her that I wanted to stay together. But, I also told her that I didn’t want to do any of that at her expense. I offered to be there as her best friend and loving father to our children. I gave her an invitation… an opportunity to second-guess the decision she’d made almost 7 years earlier. I wanted her to think about it and what it would mean for the next 40 years of her life.

She did exactly that. She took some time and thought about it. She came back scared by what she realized. She also didn’t want anything to change but understood that what I was saying made a lot of sense.

Jenny is so selfless and giving that she rarely thinks about herself and the things that are getting to her unless someone points it out to her. Then she lets go of that stress and is amazed by how relieved she feels to have it gone. That is basically what happened in this case. I am too smart for my own good sometimes. I could see it playing out in my head and dreaded the consequences, but the love was so intense that morning that it almost felt like I couldn't spend another day without offering to let her go. The days of me regretting sending that email are not over, I'm damn sure of that. But when she looked me in the eyes a week or so later and admitted that she was relieved she wasn't going to be married to me anymore, I knew I should have seen it coming. I had given her a glimpse of "freedom" from the Dan tornado and I don't blame her in the slightest for wanting it.

Picture the Jungle Gym, being yanked again and again and again. Picture Mike Myers in his helmet, jumping and pulling and struggling - totally oblivious to what is going on behind him. He thinks it will be really fun to live in a trailer on 40 acres in a cow pasture. He thinks we should leave all of our electronics behind and live in the Montana cabin for an entire summer. He thinks it would be really cool to cash out the 401(k) and go live in Panama with the kids. He wants to cliff dive and bungee jump and fly in a wingsuit. He is a pasty, chunky and whiney glob all winter, and wannabe mountain man in the summer, brimming with more testosterone than a slab of hormonally treated beef. He pulls and he pulls and he pulls.

“Let’s just go for it! Let’s have an adventure! I don’t want to plan it. I don’t want to hear about schedules. Come with me! It will be fun!”

That harness pops and twangs as he pulls. It goes from slack to tight, snapping over, and over, and over…

And the Jungle Gym just stays there and takes it.

Now, what if instead of giving the hyper-hypo chocolate you instead cut the harness? You aren’t really sure where the he will run with his new freedom, but you do know where the Jungle Gym will be – cemented into the same spot. Finally having a chance to take a deep breath of fresh air – time to relax and listen to the laughter of playing children. Time to enjoy the afternoon breeze.

The truth is, the hyper-hypo will run and thrash for a little while. He will sprint back and forth past the Jungle Gym, glancing over at the cut harness and not really sure what to do about it. He will buy a new pocket knife because he thinks he might ride his motorcycle to Moab to clear his head. Then he will drive to Wyoming and get a job working on an oil rig - a job that he won't ever really start because the atrophied logic quadrant of his brain is kicking off the cobwebs and firing back into working order. With the Jungle Gym there to keep him tethered, he never needed to use that part of his brain. He let it run out of gas and forgot about it completely.

Eventually he will calm down and sit on a bench at the other side of the playground, close enough to still have the Jungle Gym in view. (In this case the bench is a rented room on Foothill drive.)

That is pretty much how it happened. That morning I realized what I had been doing all of this time. I wanted her to have the chance to experience that relief and decide whether or not she wanted to make it permanent. I wanted her to have calm and consistency. I wanted her to have the man and life I think she deserves, even if I am not able to deliver. I also didn’t want either of us to try to be any more or less than who we are. For all of these years I really felt like I was meeting her in the middle, though I realize now that she was pulling a lot more weight than I was. I stayed at the office job I despise because I always wanted to feel like I was taking care of her. All things considered, we were very good for each other.

This whole situation reminded me of a Buddhist teaching I once read. It is about a man who is on a long journey and reaches a wide river that he must cross. At the bank of the river he finds a boat. He climbs in and paddles the boat to the other side. During his time in the river, the boat is the most important thing to him. He needs it. It is crucial to his journey.

However, when he reaches the other side of the river, he must leave the boat behind. It makes no sense for him to haul it out of the water and drag it over land. That wouldn’t be sensible, it would just be exhausting. He may be very grateful to the boat for the important part it played in his journey, but to continue he must leave it behind.

I told Jenny about that story and theorized that our marriage has been a lot like that. I think I was her boat. Although, in our version we had a little more fun with it – instead of a man and a boat it is a hot chick and a Jet Ski!

The concept is still there. Neither of us wants Jenny to have to haul around that Jet Ski any longer.

I hope this puts any rumors or questions to rest. There was no big fight. There was no cheating. There was no big skeleton discovered in someone’s closet.

We held each other and sobbed and confessed our love for each other. We both want so badly for the other to be as happy as they can be. We want the other to be exactly who they are and feel no need to try to adapt or change unnaturally in an attempt to “fit” the marriage. We spent 24 hours in the car the next day, holding hands and laughing with the girls as we listened to Despicable Me for the 19th time. We went home and made love.

It hasn’t all been easy. There have been nights of bitter tears. We have coped with the transition very differently. Jenny, still a calm as a glassy lake has thrown herself into holding it together for the girls and trying to keep our family machine running the way she always has. She works out and organizes and gradually I am trying to help “un-Dan” the house.

I, on the other hand, had a brief and ugly destructive stint. It really is just another example of how opposite we are. Jenny cleans out a cabinet. I get drunk and sob behind a bar. I sign up for a cage fight. I have another beer and try to fight a Dodge.

Jenny has a clean and organized cabinet. I have a broken hand.

Are you starting to get the picture? I hope so.

She has been kind and generous and selfless throughout this process. She hasn't asked for anything and has even given back some of what I left her. She carefully packed bins of silverware, plates, cups, towels and other essentials I had forgotten. It is strange to start over. You go grocery shopping and go back to your place to fix a salad and then realize that you don't own a fork. She is still taking care of me.

I have had moments of selfish weakness. I have begged her to take me back, but those were only the times I was thinking more for myself than I was for her.

I will always love Jenny. As this transition moves on that love is also changing. Sure, I still think she is smoking hot but now that romantic love is being replaced by the growing love I have for the person she is. I love the mother she is to our girls. I am forever grateful to her and in her debt for the part she has played in my life. I want nothing more than for her to be happy.

For our friends and loved ones: please don’t walk on eggshells around us. We don’t! There are no sides to this. You don’t need to pick allegiances. There won’t be a divvying up of friends process down the road.

Jenny and I hung out all day yesterday. We drove and held hands and talked for hours. We caught up on what is going on in the other one’s life. She brought the girls out and saw my place. We got a coffee. It was just delightful! Seeing them always makes my day. Watching them drive away is still hard – on both of us, I think.

But we remain convicted that this is the right move for us. That may change. This is all still very new and we are both in uncharted waters right now.

We are moving on, though. And, most importantly, just like when we were married we both want our relationship to keep getting better.

I think we are doing a pretty good job of working toward that future – maybe not married, but still together.