Never go to bed angry
I snorted quietly to myself, the sound bitter and fond all at once.
Non-negotiable.
As if we weren’t negotiating our sanity every day.
It wasn’t one big moment where we gave up.
It was hundreds of tiny ones.
Cupboard doors left half open. Wet towels on the bed. Rewashing the same damp load three times because neither of us remembered it existed.
Even his chewing started to irritate me, the way I could hear it in the quiet and feel irrational rage rise like a heat rash.
We stopped touching in the small ways too. No bum squeezes in the kitchen. No hand on my thigh in the car. No leg draped over his in bed.
Not as a decision.
Just… as a drift.
And the worst part was, attraction didn’t die neatly.
It flickered. Inconveniently. Like a faulty light.
Sometimes Dan would walk past in a T-shirt and I’d get a flash of him before kids. Before responsibility. Before we became two adults carrying separate loads in the same house.
Sometimes he’d look at me like he wanted me and I wouldn’t know what to do with it, because I wanted to be wanted, but I didn’t know how to be touched without feeling like one more person needed something from my body.
And then there were the antidepressants. The numbness. The way orgasms became this far-off concept like a language I used to speak but can’t access anymore.
How do you explain that to your husband without turning it into a diagnosis? Without making it sound like his fault? Without admitting you don’t recognise your own body?
So I didn’t.
I rolled over. I pretended to be asleep. Sometimes he did too.
And slowly, our messages turned into logistics.
Emma:Can you get nappies on the way home?
Dan:Already did.
Emma:Legend.
Dan:Did you pay the gas bill?
Emma:Crap. Doing it now.
Dan:Good save.
Not exactly the stuff of great love stories.
In the dark, Dan’s arm tightens around me again, as if his body knows I’m spiralling.
