My Vermont (begin strikethrough)civil union(end strikethrough) divorce.

The moment of the Big Kaboom, when I knew our relationship was over just 14 months after our Vermont civil union, I knew instinctively that I would not be attending the lesbian support group at the gay and lesbian community center for help. Suddenly I had more in common with the straight married neighbors in our New Jersey town.

In August 2002 my partner and I had gone to City Hall in Burlington, Vt., and filled out applications for a civil union license. We pledged traditional vows before a justice of the peace on the banks of Lake Champlain. At our wedding reception in New Jersey a few months later, our friends and family toasted us and danced to a live band.

This was no lesbian second date, no "pull up the U-Haul." After five years together we had carefully prepared for commitment. We had pre-marriage counseling with our Dignity USA chapter priest. We created wills and powers of attorney. Still, nothing prepared me for what the radical act of marriage felt like; for the wild immensity of the ritual; for how deeply open I felt to the sky, the lake, our future together--how connected I felt to our families in spirit.

Longtime residents of New Jersey, we had chosen a civil union in Vermont as the most legal way to marry at the time, announcing it to loved ones with engraved invitations. So when the Big Kaboom hit, there was no way to minimize it to myself or others, no way to slink away and then months later tell all those people, "Oh, yeah, we broke up."

This was no breakup. This was a divorce.

This was a 10-page separation agreement. This was a docket number on a legal complaint for dissolution. This was me swearing to a judge that I told the truth.

Why bother getting a legal dissolution? After all, it's a tremendous challenge. While Vermont has no residency requirement for getting a civil union, for dissolution it has a one-year residency requirement for at least one party. Couples who are joined in Vermont and later ask their state courts to dissolve their out-of-state union face an uphill battle.

People have asked me kindly, "How legal was it anyway? You live in New Jersey, and your civil union only really counted if you live in Vermont." Talking to a friend, I struggled to put into words why it felt so vital. It wasn't for financial reasons: We had no children, no joint property. "Why, not suing for dissolution would invalidate the whole thing," she said wisely. And that was it, the word I was searching for. I would not invalidate our civil union by agreeing that it didn't count.

Grieving, heartsick, I began dissolution proceedings and joined a women's divorce support group, sponsored by the local chapter of the National Organization for Women, searching for closure and healing. Every week, as new women joined the circle, I had to come out again as a lesbian married in a civil union. When I said my partner was a woman, the only difference I noticed in other women's reactions was a perceptible leaning-in, as if they were hoping for something new, a uniquely lesbian slant on this painful journey--because the tales told around that table were as predictable as nightfall. But there was nothing unique in my story.

Slowly my divorce group buddies and I healed together; learned that forgiveness saves your life; that taking responsibility for your own part, whether big or small, makes you a divorce survivor, not a victim.

I still believe that marriage will bring most of us incredible blessings. But when our marriages don't work, I hope we insist on proper divorces, with lawyers and judges in our courts, because we deserve to honor our unions with this validation too. We deserve help breaking up house holds and navigating custody of children. Just as we insist on the right to marry, we have to demand that the legal system help us dissolve our unions when we have to. Because these are not empty ceremonial gestures we are making in Vermont and Massachusetts and Oregon and San Francisco. Our marriages count.

Anderson is a writer whose work includes "Kiss of Death, Inc. "in the lesbian short-fiction anthology Love Shook My Heart 2 (Alyson).