I grab my purse from the coatrack and slip my shoes on. "I guess I'll see you tonight," I mutter as I reach to open the door.
But then freeze when his words cut through the air.
"So we're not even going to talk about last night?"
I turn, my hand still on the doorknob and an incredulous look on my face. He still has his phone in one hand and his coffee in the other, but he's now looking at me with a blank stare.
"Talk?" I squeak. "Nowyou want to talk?"
He stares at me for another moment, and I have no idea what he's feeling.. "Well, I wanted to talk last night, but that clearly wasn't happening."
My lips part in surprise, and my hand drops from the door so I can face him completely. "You ended the conversation by walking into another room and staying there for hours. If the living room had a door, you would have shut it in my face. How was I supposed to know you wanted to talk?"
He holds my gaze, still rigid and still unforgiving. "You should've known," he finally answers. "We've been together for long enough. You should've known that I wanted you to follow me so we could talk about it."
I think my jaw actually pops open at that. I try to form a response but I can't think of a single one.Is he really expecting me to be psychic? How am I expected to know what he wants when he doesn't ask for it?
I have a fleeting thought that it’s a quality I would expect only a teenage girl to have. Not a grown ass man.
"I… I didn't know," I eventually stutter. "Do… umm, do you want to talk about it now?"
He lets out a heavy sigh, like I'm inconveniencing him, as he lifts the coffee mug to his lips.
"We'll talk about it later. Have a good day at work." And then he's already back to reading whatever article he has opened on his phone. As if my presence is no longer needed.
I bite my tongue to keep from snapping at him that I'm not a child to be dismissed. But I know that would only set him off again and restart the cold shoulder clock, so instead I mumble the same goodbye back to him as I walk out the door. I'm seething the entire way to the bus stop.
Steve was never like this before we moved in together. He was the nicest, most charming guy I'd ever met when we first started dating, and it didn't take long for me to fall for his Prince Charming personality. He was kind, and thoughtful, and he absolutelyworshippedme. He seemed so mesmerized by me, like he wanted nothing more than to be in my life. And that kind of attention—coming from a man who’s so handsome and seems so perfect—the kind of man every woman wants to bring home to her mother, is nearly impossible to resist. We started dating not long after we met.
It wasn't until we moved in together that he seemed to change.
It wasn't anything specific, meaning he didn't exactly become a whole new person or show his "true colors," but everything just became… less. He becamelessinterested in my desire to start up dance classes again, until slowly that lack of interest became silent disapproval. I preferred hip-hop dancing but I also did modern and lyrical, all of which were somehow too provocative for him—whether from the outfits or the movements themselves, I was never sure. Even my love for electronic music became frowned upon, to the point that sometimes even listening to the music in his presence would win me a look. And going to EDM festivals was out of the question. Between the “whorish” outfits, as he so kindly referred to them, and the variety of drugs that always accompany those types of shows, there wasn’t a chance in Hell I could ever bring up the idea of going to see even a low-key trance artist.
My career path didn’t please him anymore, either. He didn’t approve of my being a waitress in general—because “it should never be a career goal”—but he downrighthatedthe fact that I had an occasional part-time job working as a bartender. The nights that I would work at the bar were the nights we got into our biggest fights. Until one day, the extra money just wasn’t worth it, and I quit to work solely at the café. Not long after that, I ended up enrolled in college, even though I grew up in a home where we were told college isn’t necessary to be successful. Even my dream of owning a café was beneath him. The only thing he approved of was my ability to cookfor him.
He became less interested in my friends and family. He no longer tried to impress my parents, and he stopped encouraging me to hang out with my friends. I barely even text my friends anymore because I have no more excuses to give about why I can’t see them—and admitting that it’s because I feel guilty spending any time away from Steve is out of the question. My sister is the only one I ever really hang out with anymore.
My sister doesn't understand why I'm still with Steve. If things aren't as good as they used to be, then why would I stay in a less-than-perfect relationship?
What she doesn't understand is that even with these bouts ofless, our relationship is still amazing. I still love Steve. And every relationship suffers the loss of the honeymoon phase at some point, which is what happened when we moved in together and began spending twice as much time together. Everyone is bound to find things they don't like about the other person when they intertwine their lives by moving into a shared space.
And on top of all of that, I still get the same Steve—the Steve that I fell in love with—the majority of the time. Things are great 85% of the time. It's only that 15% that things are subpar. And subpar is not bad. It's notget out of this horrible relationshipbad.
So what if he's not as obsessed with me as he was in the beginning? It’s completely normal to feel infatuated in the first year of a relationship, and then have those intense emotions fizzle after an extended period of time together. It seems impossible for any couple to continue living with the same level of interest as when they first met. It's hardly worth throwing away a decent relationship over.
The only times I actually question that theory is when Steve makes me question myworth.
When he goes from simply not worshipping me, to making me feel less-than.
When he makes me feel like a whore.
When he glares at my outfits, even if they’re not provocative, or when he rejects my idea of a tattoo because he says they’re trashy. When he gives me a look of repulsion any time that I try to encourage him to be a little less vanilla in bed. Sometimes I even get the look just for being the one toinitiatesex.
I don't think he realizes he does it. I think it's a form of his insane insecurities that he never learned to cope with after his college fiancée cheated on him. Add to that the very traditional values that he was raised with, and it makes sense that he's a little sensitive.
That thought manages to calm me down by the time I step off the bus and begin walking toward the café. I need to remember that Steve didn't freak out over my mention of Tommy because he loves me less, but because he loves memore. It's a defensive reaction. He doesn't really think I was mentally cheating on him, he's just conditioned to jump to that conclusion because of his own ex. He panicked because he loves me and doesn't want to lose me.
By the time I reach the café doors, my inner turmoil has gone from boiling to simmering. My thoughts haven't exactly concluded how I'm going to deal with Steve when I get home tonight, but for now, I'm at least back to being sure that he loves me. That we'll be okay.