Sometimes it's just a disconnection. As a couple your timing is out. You orbit each other constantly but you stop noticing how she looks in the soft blue moonlight.
It happens to everyone. It happened to us.
It had been getting steadily worse for weeks and for no reason. Things were fine and then they weren't. Nothing was spoken because it seemed so artificial. There was nothing to talk about because nothing was wrong.
But things were very wrong that day. I can't even remember what set us off but by the time we arrived home from a very uncomfortable Sunday brunch together all the anger and passive aggression of the last month had burst out into the world of real things.
Little digs were met with snapping which rapidly grew into real anger. And then as we closed the front door behind us, she said it.
"I only have sex with you out of a sense of obligation."
Silence.
The statement hung in the air. Threatening and bitter.
I might have physically slumped because I could see the regret in her eyes immediately.
Now was the moment for resolution and forgiveness. For realignment.
But men can be stupid, and me most of all.
So instead I looked at the vulnerability written over her face and all I saw was weakness and a wounded enemy.
In cold, clear and deliberate tones I told her, "If I treated you the way you treat me we would already be divorced."
I hated myself immediately but I held my gaze and watched her soul fracture. She turned her head away so I wouldn't enjoy the satisfaction of my cruelty and she slipped into our room and closed the door behind her.
I hadn't cried for 30 years but I broke at that moment and tears welled up in my eyes. I stormed off to the living room, turned the television on by instinct and then didn't notice it again while I sat on the sofa brooding and gorging on self pity.
"I only have sex with you out of a sense of obligation."
This from the woman I adored and loved beyond all measure and I constantly desired. Despite the last few weeks of discomfort I still woke every morning and looked at her sleeping beside me and fell in love with her all over again. I wanted to wake her and have her while she was still coated in soft velvety sleep. During the day she might be reading a book, or typing out her thesis or just standing in the kitchen drying a cup and I'd feel that powerful urge to consume her sexually and to reaffirm the .. connection.
Some little thing about the room changed and it took me a moment to realise the television had gone silent. I looked up and Alana was standing in front of me, freshly showered, wearing her pyjama t-shirt and pink cotton panties. With the palm of her hand she wiped tears from her cheeks.
It was clear from the expression on her face she was as compromised by melancholy and self loathing as me.
She coughed a little to clear her throat. "Did you mean it? What you said about divorce?"
Regret and all my emotional pain wrote the story all over my face. "Of course not. I was angry about what you said."
She nodded just a little and the words caught in her mouth before she could finally speak them. "I only said it because I knew how much it would hurt you. I didn't mean it."
