Wooden Promises
For some people it happens gradually—a slow fade, a steady separation, like cracks on the sidewalk in the heat of summer. A few compromises, a few failures, and just the right kind of pressure, and one day you wake up and oh God I have no idea how we got here but my life is falling apart.
For me and Lia it was different.
For us there was a moment. An actual moment. I saw the exact second things started to fall apart.
We were fighting about my work schedule. It wasn’t the first time this had come up; we’d felt the tension for a little under a month now, circling over one another like cartoon vultures. But things got bad that night. We crossed some lines.
“I’m sorry, I just don’t get why you’re angry.”
“I’m angry because I don’t feel like a priority, Kevin,” she said. It wasn’t a yell, but there was an aggression in her words. “I feel like a distraction. I know your job description; the firm doesn’t make you work these kinds of hours if you don’t want them to. But you work them. So… so you want to.” She took a breath. “You want to be there more than you want to be here.”
“Lia, I swear this is just a temporary situation. It’s a stepping stone to accomplishing a bigger goal. You just gotta give me a little more—”
“What bigger goal, Kevin?” Her voice cracked. She sounded exasperated. “A raise? A promotion? You really think those things will make it easier?”
I nodded and then stared at her, silently. I didn’t like her question.
She raised her eyebrows.
“Okay, so let’s say you’re right,” I said. “Let’s say I cut down work hours and spend more time here. What then? What do you honestly think I’m gonna be able to give you that you don’t already have?”
More silence. This time a little less uncomfortable.
Then the moment.
I saw it in her eyes. That frightening thought, creeping across from the periphery of her consciousness like a spider along the sealed edge of the bathtub. She didn’t even say it out loud, but I saw her eyes change as it happened; a slow realization, followed by a sudden, momentary shock at what she was capable of thinking.
I don’t want this anymore
It was enough to stop the argument. She muttered a few concessions and walked away. I didn’t press it. I figured I had gotten what I wanted, and so we let it slide. I kept working. She didn’t say anything. Neither did I. We were scared we might fight again—fight tooth and nail, the way we’d said we never would. We kept it like that for a while, brooding.
But the thought stayed. It watched and waited, feeding and growing in that dark corner of her mind, as if the spider in the bathtub had hidden an egg sac just ready to burst with hundreds of tiny eight-legged offspring ready to crawl all over our marriage. Every once in a while I saw the thought poke its head out into the daylight, in the form of a word, a gesture, a gift that tried to reel me back into a domestic web, away from the hours of jungle-like reports and transcripts and budgets. I never said anything. Like her, I didn’t want to fight. The tense silence of a night where neither of us touched the other was endurable—why risk that with a fight?
But tense silence didn’t last.
So we did fight. We fought hard. A few months of pent-up loneliness, fear, insecurity makes for a hell of a lot of pressure on a spider’s egg sac. And I’m a lawyer. I know how to argue when I want to, when I feel like I have nothing to lose. I know how to make someone feel like they’ve lost an argument before it’s even begun.
For a month we fought. Pretty much every night by the end of it. We tried couples’ counselling a couple of times, but it didn’t really work. And by the time we were tired of fighting, silent exhaustion was all that was left.
I came home from the office one day to find the house almost empty. It was jarring how much space was left. I looked around for the bookshelf on the far wall and the paintings Lia had made to hang in the dining room.
She was standing in the kitchen with a glass of wine in her hand. She turned to look at me as I walked in.
“You’re leaving?”
“Yeah,” she whispered. She looked like she was about to cry.
I nodded.
“I dunno, Kev, I just… this wasn’t what I thought being married to you was going to be like.”
I put my briefcase on the counter and walked around beside the stove. “What did you think it would be like?”
She shook her head slowly and sighed. “Fulfilling, I guess? I dunno. I think I was just looking for something more; something you just… don’t wanna give me.”
I nodded.
“I’m sorry, I just… I can’t be just another part of your life’s portfolio. I feel like that’s how you see me. And I can’t do it anymore.”
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