My wife and I took part in a documentary that aired on MSNBC Sunday night, entitled Love & Marriage in the 21st Century. The filmmaker, Fred Golding, followed us and three other couples around for what seemed like forever and asked lots of personal questions about money and family and and careers and sex. When it was all over, which for us was in November, we were quite sick of the whole thing (though we got to really like Fred and his assistant, Alex) and were quite glad to be done with it.

We saw the doc in its entirety in December and were both a little chagrined: I felt I came off like a middle-aged whiner worrying where his hopes and dreams went, while my wife thought she came off like an emotionally challenged career nazi. (Watching it with her, there were several occasions where she turned to me and said, “That was taken out of context” or “I also said how much I loved you right then.”) I certainly got a better sense of why, after I have written things about people that I thought were perfectly honest and representative, they have objected. Fred was doing what any director, or writer, has to do when telling a story with multiple characters: He was selecting material to make his points, using what we had said to illuminate a certain kind of modern marriage: working (always working) wife and sometimes working (trying to work) stay-at-home dad.

If nothing else, it was educational for me as a journalist though we were both kind of relieved when the network aired it opposite the Olympics, with minimal promotion. And the feedback we did get was almost entirely positive: a lot of husbands and wives saw themselves in our situtation and thought us articulate and honest. Our house looked great, too, and really, what else matters?

Probably the weirdest thing for me was the sense that I was watching my life in real time: most of it was filmed last winter and I was wearing the same coat and hat when I walked the same dog… it was like The Truman Show except the whole world wasn’t watching. They were waiting for a miracle on ice.