David is lying across my bed. His shirt is off. He’s just in his underwear. We’ve been drinking.
It all started because David said he wanted to make me dinner, and he brought over a bag of groceries and took over the kitchen. And since he brought dinner, I figured I should open one of the bottles of wine that’s been taking up space on the credenza. We each had a glass of red wine and then had another. And then another. And then we opened another bottle for some reason. Between the deliciousness of dinner and all the laughing, more drinking seemed like a good idea.
And here we are, stuffed and still drunk. We started kissing in bed. But his watch got caught in my hair, and we started to laugh. And since then, we haven’t really recovered. We’re just lying next to each other, both half dressed, holding hands and looking up at the ceiling.
“I think Ryan is going to want to get back together,” I say to the air.
David doesn’t move or look at me. He keeps his focus on the ceiling. “Yeah?” he asks. “Why do you think that?”
“Well, he said as much,” I say.
Now he does shift toward me. “I thought you guys weren’t talking,” he says. David knows the deal. He knows the drill. At this point, he knows about the fights and the resentments. He knows about the lack of sex, the bad sex.
“He writes me letters sometimes,” I say. I leave it at that. I don’t feel like explaining it.
“Ah,” he says. His hand is still in mine. He’s starting to massage my hand in his. “Well, how do you feel about that?”
I laugh, because that is the question, isn’t it? How do I feel about that? “I don’t know,” I say, and then I sigh. “I’m thinking that I’m not sure I feel the same way. Or, yeah, that’s exactly it. I’m not sure I feel the same way. It scares me that I’m not sure anymore.”
“Man,” David says, looking back up at the ceiling. “I’m almost envious of you. I wish . . . God, I wish I could stop thinking about Ashley. I wish I could feel unsure that I love her or want her.”
“It still hurts?” I ask, but I know the answer. I’m just trying to give him space to talk about it.
“Every day. It hurts every day. It kills me not to tell her everything going on in my life. And sometimes I just want to call her and say, ‘Let’s get dinner. Let’s figure this out.’”
“Why don’t you?” I ask. I roll onto my stomach, with my elbows out in front of me. Listening pose.
“Because,” he says, his voice becoming animated and passionate, “she cheated on me. You can’t . . . if someone cheats on you, I mean, the self-respecting thing to do is to leave that person. You can’t be with someone who cheats on you.”
Normally, I would agree with him. But it really sounds as if he’s saying it because he’s been told that’s what he should think.
“I don’t know,” I say. “It was one time, right?”
“She says it was one time. But isn’t that what all people who cheat say? Anyway, I’m not sure it matters whether it was once or a millions times.” He turns over onto his stomach now, too. Our shoulders grazing each other.
“People make mistakes,” I say. If I have learned one thing in all of this, it’s that we’re all capable of more than we think we are, for better or worse. Everyone has the potential to fuck up big when the stakes are high. “I threw a vase at my husband’s head.”
David turns to me. “You?”
I nod.
Yes, it was me. Yes, I am ashamed I did it. But it also wasn’t me. That wasn’t me. That person was so angry. I was so angry. I’m not angry anymore.
“The point is, everyone makes mistakes. And I have to think, the way you love Ashley, the way you talk about her, the way you can’t get over her, I’m not sure that’s all that common of a love. It might be the kind of love that can overcome this sort of stuff.”
The fact is, I look at David, I look at how he yearns for his ex-wife, I look at how he is clearly unable to move on from her in any meaningful way, and I’m the one who’s jealous. Not of her. Of him. I want to love like that. I want to feel as if I’m not OK without someone, without Ryan. But I am OK.
Things aren’t perfect right now. But I’m OK.
That can’t be good.
David and I keep talking. The conversation drifts in and out but always goes back to Ashley. I’m paying attention. I’m listening. But my mind is elsewhere.
I have something I need to do.
• • •
April 30
Dear Ask Allie,
I have been married for six years. My husband and I met eleven years ago. For most of my adult life, I have believed he was my soul mate. For most of our relationship, I have truly loved him and felt loved by him. But some time ago, for reasons that have only started to become clear to me now, we stopped being good to each other.
When I say that the reasons for this are starting to become clear, I mean I have realized that our marriage suffered from issues of resentment. We resented each other for things like how often we had sex, the quality of the sex we did have, the places we wanted to eat dinner, how we showed affection for each other, all the way down to basic errands like calling the plumber.
I’ve come to realize that resentment is malignant. That it starts small and festers. That it grows wild and unfettered inside of you until it’s so expansive that it has worked its way into the furthest, deepest parts of you and holds on for dear life.
I can see that now.
And the reason I can see all of this now is that my husband and I recognized that we had a problem about nine months ago, and we decided to give each other some space. We agreed to a yearlong break.
The year is not over, and I already feel I have gained a great deal of perspective that I didn’t have this time last year. I understand myself better. I understand what I did to contribute to the downfall of my marriage. I also understand what I allowed to happen to my marriage. When this trial period is over, I know I will be a changed woman.
The problem is that in our time apart, I have learned that I can lead an incredibly fulfilling life without my husband. I can be happy without him. And that scares me. Because I think, maybe, you shouldn’t spend your life with someone you don’t need. Isn’t your marriage supposed to be the union of two halves of a whole? Doesn’t that necessitate that they cannot be whole themselves? That they must feel as if they are missing a piece when they are apart?
When I agreed to this idea of taking time off, on some level, I thought I’d learn that it wasn’t possible. I thought I’d learn that life without my husband was unbearable and that it would be so unbearable that I’d beg him to come home, and when he came home, I’d have learned a lesson about never undervaluing him again. I thought this was a way to shock myself into realizing how much I needed him.
But when the worst happened, when I lost him and he started dating other people, the sun rose the next morning. Life went on. If it’s true love, is that even possible?
During our time apart, I’ve talked to anyone who will listen about my marriage. I’ve talked to my sister, my brother, my mother, my grandmother, my best friend, a man I’m seeing casually, and all of them have different ideas of what marriage is. All of them have different advice about what to do.
And yet I’m still lost.
So what do you think, Allie?
Do I get back together with the man I used to love?
Or do I start over, now that I know that I can?
Sincerely,
Lost in Los Angeles
I don’t reread it. I know that I’ll lose my nerve. I just hit send. And off it goes, into the nothingness of the Internet.