I believed my nine-year marriage was solid. Then my husband mocked my cooking, his phone buzzed on the counter, and one message from my younger sister made me realize everything I trusted was built on a lie.
I used to think our marriage was… normal. Not the Pinterest kind.
Not the “we have a matching set of luggage and a dog named Biscuit” kind. But normal enough that, if you asked me at a work happy hour, I’d smile into my drink and go:
And I would’ve believed myself.
We lived in a decent house in a decent neighborhood. Beige walls, a couch we bought on sale, a kitchen that always smelled faintly like coffee, and whatever candle I was pretending fixed my stress.
My husband, Mark, was the kind of man who looked like he had it together.
Button-down shirts. Clean shoes. Charming when he wanted to be.
He could hold a door for an elderly woman and then, five minutes later, act like I was dramatic because I said something that hurt my feelings.
I worked full-time.
He worked full-time. We split the bills. We split chores… in theory.
In practice, I did more, but I told myself that was just how marriage worked.
People take turns carrying the weight. Sometimes you carry more.
We didn’t have kids, which was the one thing that always hovered over us like a ceiling fan that never turned off.
“We’re trying,” I’d say when people asked.
He’d squeeze my hand and smile, like we were in on some sweet secret.
The truth was… I was trying. He was saying we were.
Every month, I’d do the mental math.
The apps. The vitamins. The “maybe we should cut down on wine” conversations.
Mark would nod like a supportive teammate and then forget to pick up the fertility-friendly lube I texted him about three times.
Or he’d make a comment like:
As if my uterus were a shy houseplant. But I still had hope.
The comparisons had been there for years, too.
Like background noise I’d trained myself to ignore.
If I folded towels wrong, his mom “always did it neater.”
If I bought the wrong brand of pasta sauce, his mom “knew the best one.”
If I wore a dress to dinner and asked if it looked okay, he’d go, “It’s fine. My coworker’s wife wears stuff like that, and she always looks really put together.”
Fine. That was his favorite word for me.
I told myself he didn’t mean it the way it sounded.
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