Oct. 19th, 2009

talonkarrde: (Default)

We had one of those wonderful marriages where every little thing was meaningful to us — the first time that I told her she was beautiful was in the hallway of our old high school. She didn’t believe me then; she thought that I was saying it just to be nice, or worse, to tease her, but I meant it honestly. It was my fumbling way of telling her that I wanted to us be together — not that she took it that way at the time — but when we actually started dating, she told me it was the first time anyone had said that to her. I think that’s why she married me.

But it wasn’t just about the first time that I said it — when I woke up on a lazy Saturday morning and whispered it into her ear, when we finished dressing to go out, that day that we got married…I saw that small smile, just for me. And in response, she would say she loved me; the little exchange always brought a light to my eyes. I soon learned that using those words could defuse many of the arguments that we got in. Not all of them, of course, but I know that there were more than a few times where we almost started yelling at each other — about the bills, about the unplanned pregnancy, about a lot of things — and I stopped, took a deep breath, and said "I think you’re beautiful," and we both calmed down enough to work it out.

I remember the endless nights when we used to cuddle in bed, or raid together, or browse the internet and share links about stupid news stories, laughing at them. The little smiles and gestures we shared persisted much longer than our friends' had, I learned, who said they ‘grew out’ of that stage of their relationship. One of them said that it was just a slow change where the gestures don’t mean that much after they kept getting reused. I never understood how that was — every time I told her she was beautiful, it was positive reinforcement for both of us.

Maybe that’s why I never saw it coming.

I don’t know if it’s because I was oblivious or because, according to her, it never happened, but I never felt her drifting away. She tells me that she never stopped loving me, and as much as I wanted to yell bullshit at that, at the idea that you could love and be married to someone and then lie to him about another lover you had, a part of me wanted desperately to believe it. All I know is that during her affair, our schedule never changed. We kept on alternating getting food from Subway and McDonald’s when we didn’t feel like cooking after work, kept on putting the baby to sleep and then staying up all night to game or snuggle, she kept on saying she loved me and I kept doing the little things that made her smile.

Then the phone bill came in, saying that we owed another $70 on top of the usual rate, because we were hundreds of minutes over what the plan covered. I thought it was a mistake until I called them, bitching about how we were being overcharged and that there was no way this was a legitimate charge. I remember the customer service rep’s voice — polite at first, then defensive, and finally, after he told me what the minutes were from and we both realized what it meant, soft and apologetic. I remember him saying, "I’m sorry,” as if it had any meaning, and then asking if he could do anything else for me, as if he could fix anything by lessening the charges.

I was angry… but much more than that, I just wanted to know why. I wanted to know what it was about me that made her seek someone else, what I, her husband, could change to be as important to her as someone she had never met, someone she had met online. I wanted to know what the fuck I did wrong, and why she never told me so I could make it better. I confronted her about it that night, after we put our child to sleep, and all she could say was that she was sorry.

So I asked him, the person who my wife had been cheating on me with, I swallowed my pride and asked him what I did wrong, and all he could say was that she always said she still loved me — as if that made what they did okay, as if that meant our marriage was going to go back to what it was before.

I am staying with her for the sake of our child, because he deserves to be raised with two parents. It took time for me to even talk to her anymore, but we’ve restored some semblance of what we had. We still game together, even snuggle sometimes, and go out to dinner together.

I still tell her, from time to time, that she’s beautiful, and she still responds that she loves me. That little smile isn’t there any more, and those words don’t mean anything to me anymore. Perhaps it had never meant anything in the first place. But I’m afraid to stop, because even though they are empty gestures, they keep our marriage together.

---

Edit: Author's Note:
I'm sorry, I forgot to add this in before I submitted it. The speaker is not me, though neither is it fiction, and I would like to leave it at that.

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Talon

July 2025

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