When we were dating, my husband told me I was the only person he could really talk to. I thought it was the most romantic thing anyone had ever said to me.
Fourteen years later, I think it might have been a warning.
Dan is a good man. He's funny, he's present with our kids, he'll drive forty minutes to jump-start a stranger's car. He also has, as far as I can tell, no one besides me that he tells anything true. His brother gets sports. His coworkers get work. His old college roommate gets a birthday text. I get everything else: the fear about his job, the thing his dad said at Thanksgiving in 2009 that still bothers him, the 3 a.m. heart-pounding nights he won't see a doctor about.
I'm glad he tells me. I'm also tired in a way that's hard to explain without sounding like I'm complaining about being loved.
One beam
The best way I can describe it is architecture. A house holds up because the weight is spread across a lot of beams. When everything rests on one, that beam might hold for a long time. But you can't take it out for repairs, and if it cracks, everything comes down at once.
When I'm sick, Dan's whole support system has the flu. When we fight, he has nobody to talk to about the fight. When my mother was dying last year, I didn't have room for his feelings and mine. He went quiet for four months, and nobody noticed but me, because there was nobody else to notice.
What I asked for
I didn't ask him to change who he is. I asked for something specific: one friend he sees on purpose, on a schedule, without me.
He pushed back. He said he didn't need it. He said men his age don't make new friends, which I've heard so many times I've started to believe it's the reason they don't. Then he said, a little hurt, Isn't it good that I tell you everything?
It is good. I told him I want to stay the person he tells everything to. I just don't want to be the only one.
He joined a Thursday-morning pickup soccer game a neighbor had been inviting him to for three years. It took him two months before he told me he'd gotten coffee with one of the guys after. It took six before he mentioned they'd talked about their fathers.
I didn't make a big deal of it. I said, That sounds nice. Then I went into the laundry room and cried a little, because the house felt sturdier than it had in years.