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In October last year, Michael Reim saw his wife close the door of their common house in Berlin's Westend at dawn.
She will take an S-Bahn to the train station, get on a train there in the direction of Ulm and arrive at her destination seven hours later.
Michael Reim is standing at the window this morning.
He didn't sleep that night.
The previous evening he had asked: "Do you have something with that?"
"Yes," she said.
And that she will leave him.
28 years ago, says Reim, he saw his wife for the first time while sailing on the Ammersee.
On the boat he then "chatted a little cheekily" and it worked.
Marriage, two daughters, one house.
And also: to be happy together.
And yet that morning he watches as his wife leaves him.
He says, "I can't blame her."
How can so little be left of a whole life together?
Michael Reim is 68. He was a teacher of French and sports at a comprehensive school and has been retired for a few years.
He says he always complimented his wife: what a great mother, what a great cook she is.
Also that it looks great.
Maybe he got his head too often?
In the months after the breakup, Reim read his diaries.
There he found sentences that tell of closed doors, of falling asleep alone.
"Why were you so dismissive today? Why don't you kiss me anymore?"
When Ute Reim, 51, went to Ulm, she moved in with her childhood sweetheart.
She says, "I didn't go because I hate him."
Why then?
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