I will miss your company.
-Ricki Lee Jones, Company
P: Please call my mobile.
They’d fallen into this pattern of long silences broken by aching emails disguised as casual inquiries. Just checking in, he’d write. Been thinking about you, she’d say. And she continued with the business of her life during the week, managing the kids and taking care of her home and trying to be present with her husband. But the weekends hadn’t gotten any easier since he left. And he’d been gone for weeks.
Then she got a call about her dad. One of those calls heavy with news and emotion and reminders that things could change again at any moment. And without hesitation, she went looking for P.
S: It’s my dad. He’s sick again.
I’m just trying to make my head
stop spinning for a minute. So I
can figure out what to do.
P: Please call my mobile.
S: That’s sweet of you. But it’s
okay. I don’t want to bother you. Just
wanted you to know for some reason.
P: Please call my mobile
. . .
. . .
S: Okay.
He didn’t try to talk her out of her concern with empty don’t worry, everything will be okay phrases, he just let her be afraid. And like no time had passed at all, he could still finish her sentences, helping her complete the thoughts that she just couldn’t say out loud. And for a precious few minutes, he put aside his need for space to allow for her need for closeness.
He made her feel safe again.
They hung up, and she began getting dinner ready. Her husband came home from work distracted and grouchy, but instead of giving him a few minutes to shake off the work week, she went right to him, telling him about her dad’s events of the day. Don’t get yourself all worked up, you do this every time he said. And though it was his version of support, it stung her. It was so opposite her conversation with P, so void of any real concern or understanding, that it may as well have been said by a stranger.
She could have let it go. She could have swallowed away the lump in her throat and made herself appreciate the fact that he said anything at all. But that night she chose to press the issue. And quite like the statement she made to P weeks earlier, the one that opened the door to their unraveling, she opened another with her husband. I don’t know how to do this, she said.
Like all couples they argued, but they did it in a very polite way. Restrained and quiet, without door slams or raised voices. And they both thought that it was okay to take a break. To think things over. To occasionally go to bed angry, and not get everything resolved all in one sitting. All of that was okay just so long as they said I Love You.
So, over the years, even in the bleakest of times, they always said it. I love you. And in their couple-shorthand, it became just one word. Love. They said it before they hung up the phone, when he left for work, when she'd head off to bed leaving him working on the computer. Happy or sad or angry or exhausted, it was always the last word they said to one another.
But that night, they didn’t say it.
Their argument wasn’t particularly nasty. It wasn’t one of those that went too far, hanging heavy in the air for hours or days afterward. But it was the prologue. She had opened the door.
You don’t know how to do what? he asked her.
I don’t know how to be in a relationship with somebody who deals with me on autopilot.
Seriously? That sentence actually made sense to you? I’m supposed to understand what you’re upset about from that?
The reason they didn’t say love that night was because she didn’t say it first.
And as she lay there alone in her bed, she began thinking again about all of the things that happen between them only because she initiated. From little things, like what’s for dinner, to bigger things like what do to do about their boy, to the biggest things like how to keep their relationship together, she made all of the first moves. She didn’t deny that he was a pretty decent follower, but if she didn’t make the choices, neither did he. He did nothing.
She didn’t know when that became the case. Was that really who she married?
The next morning their kids were off at their activities and they had a few minutes alone. She was expecting him to bring up their exchange from the night before. He was pretty good at the morning after conversations, partly because it takes him the night to come up with words to stand up against hers, and partly because he just couldn’t stand the thought of an argument ruining a second day. But this time he was quiet. And so was she.
They went about their day like that, with something in the air, but nobody wanting to be the first to bring it up. They played with the kids and hung out with their friends and went on about their usual Saturday activities, just the four of them. The four of them and the gigantic elephant in the room.
That evening after the kids were in bed and the house was picked up, he asked her if she wanted to join him on the deck for a drink. They wrapped up in their sweatshirts and afghans, took their cocktails out to the deck chairs, and looked up at the sky. And they began to talk. There was no fighting and there were no tears, but it was as raw a conversation as they had ever had.
I hate being the guy that’s always doing you wrong. I could handle it when it came from friends or even your parents. But you’ve been pissed at me for a year.
I’m not happy. I need something else. Something more.
Then make a fucking friend, S. Stop being so afraid to just go out and make a fucking friend.
I have friends. I want a life. I want to be doing something.
Taking care of your family isn’t doing something? This is what I’m talking about. You talk in code. Do you talk like this on your blog?
Why is it that every time I try to bring this up, you respond with an insult? Why is it such a bad thing that I want to do more than just your laundry? Why aren’t you happy about having a wife that has ambition?
S always believed that most things were a choice. What to eat, what to wear, what to do. You choose to be happy or peaceful or loving. Every day she woke up and decided to see the things in her life that were good. Every day she decided to do the work to make things better.
But that’s not how her husband saw things. To him, the deciding ended with the I Do. He didn’t see the need for all the work, and was tired of her making everything so much harder than they needed to be.
Let’s start talking about having another kid. We always wanted more.
You always wanted more. I can’t handle the ones we’ve got.
Why are you going back on the way we decided to do things?
We are not those people anymore.
I’m the same. You’re the one who’s never satisfied. I love our life, even though you don’t make it easy.
And for the second time, a man she loved asked her for space.
We always said that breaks were okay. So let’s just take one.
You’d rather separate than support me?
I’d just like to know if there’s anything about our life that you’d actually miss if it was gone.
And she began to realize that their polite and peaceful coexistence might really be an unhappy marriage. And she didn't know how she was going to fix it.
