He didn’t cheat. He didn’t scream. He didn’t hit. He just rolled over every night with a sigh and five words that gutted me more than any affair ever could: “I’m too tired tonight.” For two years I blamed my body, my age, my worth. I lit candles, booked trips, folded his shirts and folded myself smaller. Then I stopped reaching. Stopped asking. Walked out with a suitcase and a spine. That’s when my husband finally noticed I was gone—while I was still standing in our living room.
At 2:13 a.m., the house sounded like it was holding its breath.
The baseboard heat clicked on with a soft metallic tick. The refrigerator hummed its tired hum. Somewhere outside, tires hissed past on wet pavement, the sound thin and far away, like a secret slipping out of town. A shadow from the streetlamp moved slowly across the bedroom ceiling as a cloud shifted.
Beside me—right beside me—my husband slept with the kind of heavy, untroubled ease you only get when you’re not the one bleeding inside your own marriage.
His back was to me. It often was, these days. Just a line of shoulder and spine under the soft worn cotton of his t-shirt. I could see the rise and fall of his breathing, slow and even. He snored a little on the exhale now, just a faint puff, like a punctuation mark at the end of each breath.
I lay on my side, eyes open in the dark, and counted.
Not sheep.
Not breaths.
Rejections.
I didn’t want to. I didn’t decide to start numbering them like days scratched into a prison wall. But my brain wouldn’t stop doing it.
One. “I’m too tired tonight.”
Two. “My head’s killing me.”
Three. “I’ve got that early call tomorrow, remember?”
Four. “Can we not? I’m just not in the mood.”
Five. “I’m too tired tonight.”
Always circling back to that one. The tired. The perpetual, all-purpose, argument-proof tired.
The first time he’d said it, it had landed softly. Reasonable. We’d both been tired. Tired happens when you’re thirty-five and working full time and trying to be responsible adults with a mortgage and a leaky faucet and a dent in the back left bumper of your car that neither of you quite remembered getting.
The first time, I’d kissed his shoulder and said, “Okay,” and turned off the lamp and rolled onto my other side, smiling into the pillow because of course this didn’t mean anything. Of course there would be next time.
The tenth time, it was a little less soft. A little less reasonable.
The one hundredth time, lying in the dark counting them felt like drowning. Quietly. Practically politely. No splashing. No screaming. Just slipping lower beneath the surface every night while he slept.
There had never been a scandal. No lipstick on collars. No secret hotel charges. No condom in the laundry or hickey on his neck. There was no villain with sharp edges I could point to and say, “There. That’s the thing that broke us.”
Just this.
Just quiet.
We didn’t even fight about it, not really. Fighting would’ve meant acknowledging it was happening.
Instead, we detached around it, like people walking around a piece of furniture in their living room that had always been there and had now turned into something they both tripped over but refused to move.
I stared at his back. At the shadow of his head against the pillow. At the crease in the pillowcase that ran parallel to his ear. Absurd, the things your brain latches onto at 2:13 a.m. when your chest feels like someone has been mining out the inside with a spoon.
I thought back to the early days.
The bed had been a different kind of place then.
We’d gotten married in October. The city had been gold and orange and crisp. I still remember the smell of our first apartment—paint and cardboard and the cheap candles I bought in bulk because I wanted everything to feel cozy.
We were obnoxious then. I know that now. We were the couple that made other people roll their eyes.
People talk about honeymoon phases like they’re a season, something you get for three months before life shows up with a pile of responsibilities and a bucket of cold water. For us, it lasted years. Or at least, it felt that way.
We used to wake up with our legs tangled so tightly we’d have to pry them apart. We’d text each other at work words that would get us fired if anyone else had read them. There were nights we barely made it from the front door to the bedroom, pausing in the hallway like the couch might be close enough.
He would look at me like he couldn’t believe his luck.
“Come here,” he’d say, pulling me toward him by the belt loops of my jeans. “Mine.”
I loved that. Loved the possessiveness of it. Not the kind that confines, but the kind that anchors. Like someone had drawn a circle around the two of us and written our names inside.
We had traditions that were entirely ridiculous and completely ours. Friday night takeout eaten on the floor because we’d never gotten around to buying a proper dining table. Sunday morning pancakes, seven pancakes exactly because “seven is lucky” and if he flipped one wrong we’d restart the batch. Summer evening drives with the windows down, his old playlists blaring songs from our college days, our fingers tangled on the center console.
We weren’t just attracted to each other. We were fascinated by each other. We wanted to tell each other every story, every thought, every stupid meme we saw online.
So when the sex started to thin out, I didn’t panic. Not at first.
Exhaustion happens. Stress happens. Some weeks you live on coffee and adrenaline and the idea of collapsing into bed unconscious is the only thing that keeps you going.
Of course there would be nights where our bodies would say, “Not today, thanks.”
But those nights multiplied.
“I’m too tired tonight.”
The front door would close and I could tell by the way his shoulders sagged that the evening was already decided. I could tell by the way his eyes didn’t scan my face in that old automatic hunger, but just brushed over me like I was a lamp that might or might not be on.
“You okay?” I’d ask, leaning in for a kiss as he kicked off his shoes.
“Long day,” he’d say.
The kiss would land somewhere near my temple. Quick. Distracted. A punctuation mark, not a sentence.
He’d scroll his phone on the couch for an hour, laugh at something some guy from work had posted on Instagram, watch two episodes of a show we used to watch together alone because I was in the kitchen loading the dishwasher or finishing emails. At ten, he’d stand up, stretch, and say, “I’m wiped. Coming?”
I’d follow him upstairs. We’d brush our teeth in parallel silence, spit, rinse. He’d climb into bed, roll onto his side, pull the covers up.
If I reached for him then, if my hand smoothed across his stomach toward his hip, sometimes he wouldn’t even open his eyes.
“I’m too tired tonight, babe.”
The “babe” stung more than the refusal.
It made it sound gentle, like a pat on the head.
It made me feel like a child pressing sticky fingers against a candy store window.
In the dark beside him, my body would ache with a kind of frustration that had nothing to do with release and everything to do with being ignored.
Want doesn’t switch off because you tell it there’s no point.
It keeps breathing even when you’re trying not to feel it.
The first time I tried to bring it up during the day, I framed it like a question about schedules. Like we were trying to figure out when to fit in grocery shopping.
We were in the kitchen, Saturday afternoon, both in old t-shirts and sweatpants, doing the domestic dance around each other while we made lunch.
“I miss us,” I said.
He was reaching for the bread. “What do you mean?”
I rinsed a tomato, watching the water run off its smooth skin, gathering words with the same precision.
“I miss… being close,” I said. “I miss how we used to… touch. Not just… you know. But everything.”
I could feel my face heating. We’d been naked together hundreds of times and here I was, blushing like a teenager trying to say “sex” in a classroom presentation.
He put the bread down. Leaned back against the counter.
“Mindy,” he said. “You know I love you.”
“I know,” I said. “That’s not what I’m—”
“It’s work,” he cut in. “I’m stressed. The promotion, the team, the constant pressure. It’s not about you.”
He said that last part like it was supposed to comfort me.
It did, a little. It would have more, maybe, if his eyes had held mine the whole time. But they darted away in the middle, down toward the floor, then up again. A tiny stutter in his gaze. A glitch.
“When this project calms down, I’ll have more bandwidth,” he added.
Bandwidth. As if this were just one more task on his overloaded CPU.
I nodded. Tried to absorb his words instead of the hollowness I felt.
It’s not about you.
Then why does it feel like it is?
The promotion came and went.
He got a raise.
We went out to dinner to celebrate. He ordered the steak. I ordered the salmon. We clinked glasses, smiled, said all the right things.
Later that night, we got home, and I watched him undo his tie with slow fingers. My heart beat faster.
“Maybe tonight,” I thought, stupidly hopeful.
He tossed the tie on a chair, pulled his shirt over his head, and yawned.
“God, I’m wiped,” he said. “So much adrenaline. My brain’s fried. Rain check?”
I smiled so hard my cheeks hurt.
“Yeah,” I said. “Of course.”
That rain check bounced every week for the next year.
I internalized it quietly, like some people internalize religion.
If I were a better wife, he’d want me.
If I were more interesting.
If I were less needy.
If I lost weight.
If I wore lingerie.
If I stopped mentioning it.
If I tried harder.
I read articles that promised “Ten Ways to Reignite the Spark” and “How to Increase Intimacy Without Pressure” and “Is Low Libido Normal In Your Thirties?”
The answer was always some version of “communicate more” and “be patient.”
So I tried.
I lit candles. Bought new underwear. Booked a weekend getaway to that little coastal town we loved with the lighthouse and the boardwalk and the tiny café that made swirl designs in the foam of your latte.
We walked hand in hand, ate seafood, took pictures of the sunset.
At night, he lay beside me, closer than he had in months.
My heart felt like a trapped bird.
He kissed me, soft and lingering, and for a moment I thought, “This is it. This is the turning point.”
Then he sighed and rested his forehead against mine.
“I’m just really exhausted,” he whispered. “Can we just sleep?”
I lay awake in that hotel bed listening to strangers laughing on the walkway outside, and something inside me finally believed what the last year had been trying to tell me.
It wasn’t going to magically go back.
He loved me. I believed that.
But he didn’t want me, not in that way, not like he used to.
And all the candles and weekends away and lingerie in the world weren’t going to resurrect something he was quietly letting die.
There wasn’t even malice in it. That almost made it worse.
He wasn’t cruel. He was… indifferent.
And indifference is like being ghosted by someone sitting two feet away.
The night after we got back from the coast, I sat on the closed toilet lid while the shower water ran hot and my reflection fogged and unfogged in the mirror.
“What if this is just what marriage becomes?” a traitorous little voice whispered. “Maybe everyone grows out of it. Maybe movies and books are lying. Maybe asking for passion after a certain age is childish.”
Then another voice—quieter, but older—said, “Or maybe you don’t have to live like this.”
That thought scared me more than the first.
Divorce?
Leave?
Over “I’m too tired tonight”?
It sounded dramatic. Ungrateful. Unreasonable.
We had a house. A dog. Shared holiday traditions. A set of matching mugs that said “His” and “Hers” in a font we’d picked out together on some silly Sunday afternoon.
You don’t blow that up because your husband doesn’t want sex as often as you do.
That’s what I told myself, anyway.
So I stayed.
And I waited.
And I twisted myself into smaller and smaller shapes, hoping one would fit.
And then, one ordinary Thursday, I tried something new.
I stopped reaching.
I didn’t plan it.
It happened the way a glass slips from your hand and shatters. Sudden, but preceded by dozens of almost slips you never notice until the last one drops.
I went to the gym instead.
Literally.
I came home, dropped my bag, looked at the couch, looked at him, felt the familiar ache rise up like it always did.
Then, instead of walking over and tucking myself under his arm the way I always did, I picked my gym bag back up.
“I’m going to work out,” I said.
He looked up from the show he was watching.
“At nine?” he asked, surprised.
“Yeah,” I said. “It helps me sleep.”
He shrugged.
“Okay. Have fun.”
He didn’t ask if I wanted company.
He didn’t ask why I suddenly needed to be somewhere else.
He turned back to the screen.
The gym was mostly empty at that hour. A few die-hard regulars. The guy who lived in the free-weight corner. The woman who always hogged the rowing machine.
I walked on the treadmill first, too keyed up to run. Twenty minutes, incline up, headphones in, the thud of my feet syncing with a song I couldn’t hear over my own pulse.
Then I lifted weights.
Awkwardly.
Wrong at first.
I watched other women who moved like they knew what they were doing—the way their muscles flexed, the way they did one more rep when their arms were shaking.
I copied them.
Clumsily.
I went home sweaty and sore and more tired than usual.
That night, I fell asleep before he did.
That small thing—a different kind of tired—felt like rebellion.
The next day, I did it again.
And again.
And then three weeks had gone by and I was looking forward to the gym more than I was looking forward to going home.
The workouts got more structured.
I started following a program.
Leg day, back day, arms, shoulders, core.
I took pictures in the locker room mirror because I didn’t trust my eyes.
At first it was just proof that I was showing up.
Then, slowly, muscles appeared where softness used to be.
My thighs got stronger.
My waist started to define.
My shoulders broadened.
I’d catch my reflection putting my hair up before work and think, “Oh. There you are.”
It wasn’t about becoming hotter so he’d want me.
Not anymore.
It was about remembering I had a body that did things for me, not just something that waited to be chosen.
He noticed, of course.
You can’t watch someone’s body change in front of you and remain oblivious.
One Saturday afternoon, I was putting away laundry when he leaned against the bedroom door and watched me.
“You look different,” he said.
“Yeah?” I folded a t-shirt. “Is it the socks-without-holes combo?”
“No,” he said, smiling faintly. “You look… stronger.”
“Thanks,” I said.
The old me would have made a joke.
Would have said, “Trying to look good for you.”
Would have turned it into an invitation.
This me just accepted the compliment like it was mine.
Because it was.
I’d earned it.
Things shifted subtly after that.
He started asking where I was going when I grabbed my bag.
“Gym,” I’d say.
“Oh.”
He didn’t try to stop me.
But he didn’t like it either.
I could see that.
For years, my life had existed inside an orbit that circled him.
Now my gravity had shifted.
And he felt the change.
He started being nicer.
More attentive.
He’d make dinner occasionally.
Offer to pick up groceries.
Text me during the day with small “How’s your day going?” messages he’d rarely sent before.
If this had happened a year earlier, I would’ve melted.
I would’ve read tenderness there.
Now, I saw something else.
An attempt to rebalance.
To bring me back into orbit.
He didn’t know how to say, “I miss having you orbit me.”
So he did chores.
And hoped that would be enough.
The line between healthy compromise and manipulation can be thin.
It’s all in the intention.
One night, a few months into my gym era, I came home sweaty and flushed, ponytail damp.
He was in the kitchen.
There were candles on the table.
Actual candles.
He’d cooked.
Real food, not takeout.
Pasta, salad, wine glasses.
“What’s this?” I asked, genuinely surprised.
He shrugged.
“I thought we could have a nice dinner,” he said. “No reason. Just… us.”
I smiled politely.
I didn’t trust it.
Not yet.
We ate.
He asked questions.
We laughed.
It almost, almost, felt like the old days.
After dinner, he cleared the plates.
We went to the couch.
He sat closer than he had lately.
Our legs touched.
My heart beat faster in spite of myself.
He turned toward me.
His hand slid across my thigh.
It wasn’t subtle.
“I’ve missed you,” he said.
Every cell in my body remembered wanting this.
For a second, I fought the urge to close my eyes and lean into it.
But then, like a film overlay, another memory played.
Me, standing in the kitchen eighteen months earlier, candles lit, carving a roast I’d made from scratch because I’d found the recipe in a magazine.
Him, coming home, kissing my cheek, scrolling his phone, scarfing down food, saying “I’m exhausted” and going to bed alone.
The difference between that night and this one wasn’t a promotion or stress level.
It was that I’d stopped playing the role of eager, forever-available wife.
He was reacting to a shift in power, not a change of heart.
I put my hand over his.
Gentle.
Firm.
“Ryan,” I said. “What are you doing?”
He laughed—awkward, a little forced.
“What? I’m being romantic. You said you missed us.”
“I do,” I said. “But I also read your emails.”
He went still.
“What?”
“You left your laptop open,” I said. “The emails with Sienna… you forgot to close them.”
Color drained from his face.
“That’s… that’s not what you think—”
“It’s exactly what I think,” I cut in. “You’ve been honest with her in ways you haven’t been with me for years.”
I didn’t raise my voice.
I didn’t throw anything.
My calm scared him more.
“You told her you feel nothing when I touch you,” I said. “That you fantasize about being single. That you’re using ‘I’m tired’ as an excuse because telling the truth would be too messy.”
He blew out a breath like he’d been punched.
“That was… venting,” he said. “Just talking.”
“You fantasize about being single?” I said quietly. “That’s not talking. That’s a plan you’re too scared to make.”
He shook his head.
“It was stupid. I was—”
“Hiding,” I finished for him. “From me. From yourself. From the fact that things are bad and you’re too afraid to say it out loud.”
His eyes shone.
“Are you… leaving?” he whispered.
“Maybe,” I said.
He flinched.
“Can we talk about this?” he pleaded. “Really talk? I’ll go to therapy. I’ll do whatever you want. Please, just… don’t shut me out.”
A year ago, that sentence would’ve been my lifeline.
Now, I heard the difference.
He wasn’t saying, “Please don’t leave because I love you and want to build something better with you.”
He was saying, “Please don’t leave because your leaving makes me feel like a failure.”
“I’m not shutting you out,” I said. “I’m finally letting myself out.”
I slept in the guest room that night.
The next morning, I booked a therapy appointment for myself, not for us.
I needed someone neutral.
Someone who wasn’t going to placate him or vilify him.
Someone who would help me untangle what was my responsibility and what was his.
My therapist’s name was Elise.
She had kind eyes and a way of sitting that made you feel like she could handle anything you threw at her.
I laid it all out.
The sex.
The lack of sex.
The “I’m tired.”
The endless flexibility.
The gym.
The emails.
The hotel.
She listened without interrupting.
When I finally ran out of words, she said, “It sounds like you’ve been working incredibly hard to maintain a connection that he isn’t investing in.”
“I thought that’s what marriage is,” I said.
She shook her head.
“Marriage is compromise,” she said. “Not self-erasure.”
We talked about attachment styles.
About my tendency to over-function.
About his avoidance.
About how those two patterns fit together like a lock and key… until the key finally realized it didn’t have to open that particular door.
“Here’s what I want you to sit with,” she said toward the end of our session. “You have permission to require desire.”
I stared at her.
The phrase sounded radical and obvious all at once.
“You’re saying it’s okay to want to be wanted?” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “Not as an add-on. As a core need.”
“I feel selfish,” I admitted.
She smiled gently.
“Selfish is what people call you when you stop doing things that only benefit them,” she said. “There’s a difference between selfishness and self-respect.”
I went to three more solo sessions before I agreed to couples therapy with Ryan.
He showed up.
To his credit, he didn’t bail.
He sat on the couch beside me, shoulders tense, answering questions that made him visibly uncomfortable.
He talked about his parents—the shouting, the manipulation, the way love had been wielded as leverage.
He talked about watching his mother collapse when his father left.
He talked about the vow he’d made never to let someone have that much power over him.
“So when you started to need Mindy,” Dr. Patel said, “you panicked.”
His mouth twisted.
“Yes,” he said. “I started pushing her away, telling myself I was being independent. All I was really doing was hurting her before she could hurt me.”
“And did that make you feel safer?” she asked.
He swallowed.
“It made me feel… numb,” he said.
“What about now?” she asked.
He glanced at me.
“I’m terrified,” he said. “And I’m tired… of being terrified. I don’t want to live like this.”
Elise—sorry, different therapist; Dr. Patel—nodded.
“And what do you want with Mindy?” she asked.
The room held its breath.
“I want… a real marriage,” he said slowly. “Not just logistics. Not just being roommates who happen to file taxes together.”
“And what does that require from you?” she pressed.
He blew out a breath.
“Being honest,” he said. “Even when I’m ashamed. Even when I’m scared she’ll leave.”
“And from you?” she turned to me.
“It requires believing him,” I said. “Sometimes. And not believing him others.”
She tilted her head.
“Say more.”
“I believe he wants connection,” I said. “I don’t believe he knows how to make it last yet. I can accept effort. I will not accept another two years of polite rejection. So if we’re doing this, it has to be different. Not perfect. But different.”
Ryan nodded, tears slipping down his face.
“I don’t deserve you,” he said.
My gut reaction was to rush in with reassurance.
To say, “Yes you do.”
To smooth that pain away.
Instead, I said, “You haven’t behaved like you do.”
Honesty is a cruel and necessary surgeon.
It cuts.
It heals.
The rebuilding wasn’t a montage.
It was messy.
Some nights, we went to bed on different sides of the house.
Other nights, we lay beside each other like teenagers, holding hands, both too scared to move forward or backward.
We scheduled intimacy sometimes.
That felt awkward.
Forced.
And strangely… grounding.
Because it meant we weren’t just waiting for desire to spontaneously combust in the middle of Netflix.
We were saying, “This matters. Enough to plan around it.”
Some attempts were disasters.
We laughed. We cried. We stopped halfway through because one of us panicked.
Other times, it worked.
Not because the sex was wild.
Because it was honest.
We talked during.
We talked after.
We talked when we didn’t have sex.
We talked when we did.
We talked.
That, more than anything, was what started to stitch us back together.
Not the orgasms.
The sentences.
“I feel insecure.”
“I feel ashamed.”
“I feel unwanted.”
“I feel afraid of being too much.”
“I feel afraid of not being enough.”
Those small words were heavier than “I’m too tired.”
And more sacred.
There is a point in healing where the person who hurt you starts to show up in the ways you always begged them to… and you no longer leap to take it.
You examine it.
You hold it up to the light.
You ask, “Is this consistent? Or is this a spike of panic?”
Over time, I started to see patterns.
He canceled fewer therapy sessions.
He initiated more often—not just physically, but emotionally.
He apologized without me prompting him.
When he was tired, he didn’t use it as a shield.
He’d say, “I don’t have it in me tonight, but I still want to be close. Can we just hold each other?”
That mattered.
Because it meant tired no longer equaled “Go away.”
It equaled “Be near me anyway.”
And my body began to trust that again.
A year and a half after the night I counted rejections at 2:13 a.m., we sat on the couch with mugs of tea in our hands.
The dog snoozed between us, snoring softly.
The house hummed quietly.
The microwave clock glowed 9:42 p.m.
“I’ve been thinking,” Ryan said.
I set my mug down.
“Dangerous,” I quipped.
He smiled.
“I know I don’t get points for doing the bare minimum,” he said. “For finally showing up the way I should’ve before.”
“True,” I said.
“But I’m… proud of us,” he said softly. “Not for staying together. For not staying the same.”
My throat tightened.
“Me too,” I said.
He turned toward me, tucking one leg under him.
“I know you could’ve left,” he said. “You would’ve been justified. I wouldn’t have blamed you.”
“I would’ve,” I said. “At least for a while.”
He nodded.
“I’m grateful you didn’t,” he said. “But I also know… if I stop doing the work, you will. And that’s… weirdly reassuring.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because it means if I’m with you,” he said slowly, “it’s because we’re both choosing it. Not because we’re trapped. Not because you’re scared. Not because I’m comfortable. Because we’re consciously saying yes. Again and again.”
I looked at him.
Really looked.
At the lines at the corners of his eyes that hadn’t been there when we got married.
At the scar on his chin from when he slipped on the driveway last winter.
At the softness in his expression that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with vulnerability.
“Then,” I said, “yes.”
He smiled.
“Ask me again tomorrow,” I added.
He laughed.
“Okay,” he said. “I will.”
Later that night, I woke up around two again.
The heat clicked on.
The fridge hummed.
A car hissed by outside, tires whispering on asphalt.
Beside me, Ryan slept.
On his back this time, one hand splayed across his chest, the other reaching out unconsciously, resting near my arm.
He scooted closer in his sleep until his shoulder touched mine.
I watched him for a minute.
I thought about all the nights I’d cried in the dark while he snored obliviously.
I thought about the hotel room.
The emails.
The couch with candles.
The therapy sessions.
The gym.
The camera.
The nights I’d chosen myself instead of him.
And I realized something I wished someone had told me years ago:
Leaving doesn’t always mean packing a suitcase and never looking back.
Sometimes it means emotionally stepping out of a dynamic that is killing you and refusing to step back in until it changes.
Sometimes it means putting your own feet on solid ground first, then deciding if the other person is willing to meet you there.
Sometimes you don’t leave the marriage.
You leave the version of yourself that accepted less than you deserved.
Ryan made a noise in his sleep and shifted, his hand finding my waist.
He wasn’t clinging.
Just… there.
Connected.
A touch that asked nothing and offered everything.
I lay there, staring at the ceiling, and for the first time at 2:13 a.m., I wasn’t counting rejections.
I was counting choices.
My choices.
The choice to stop begging.
The choice to start living for myself.
The choice to require desire instead of hoping it might show up.
The choice to return to a relationship only if it returned to me.
He murmured something unintelligible, his fingers flexing against my skin.
I turned my head and watched him.
Did I forgive everything?
No.
Forgiveness isn’t a one-time act.
It’s a series of decisions to keep going when it would be easier to shut down.
Did I forget?
Never.
You don’t “forget” the period of your life when you felt invisible next to the person you loved.
But I wasn’t living there anymore.
I’d built something new.
With him.
With myself.
Around us.
If he stopped doing the work, if tired became a weapon again, if honesty slipped into hiding, I knew what I would do now.
I wouldn’t count rejections in the dark and blame myself.
I would count my exits.
And take one.
But for now, in that quiet room, with his hand resting warm and unconscious on my waist, with my muscles still pleasantly sore from a workout, with my heart beating steadily instead of frantically, I let myself breathe.
Love, I realized, isn’t about how much hurt you can endure.
It’s about how fiercely you protect yourself while still being open to connection.
And if someone wants to walk beside you in that kind of love, they can’t do it by accident.
They have to learn how to stay on purpose.
So did I.
THE END
