Once upon a time you were one half of a pretty happy couple who stayed together for fifteen years and then your husband went through a thing and decided to leave, but it didn’t go exactly how he thought it would go, or maybe he didn’t know exactly how it would go, or at least you knew it might not go how he thought it would go, that’s probably closer to it, and after a year he was less sure about what he wanted or at least couldn’t explain what he wanted, which made you more sure that he never knew what he wanted, but by this point, you weren’t so sure what you wanted either anymore. You had wanted to try working it out from the beginning, but your husband was never fully willing to try. So you spent the year grieving and trying to stay in your life, painful as it was, and he spent the year doing you’re not sure what with you’re not sure whom, but occasionally expressing that he missed having you in his life. You and your husband would try to have conversations and sometimes they’d feel productive and sometimes they would feel the opposite of productive and so at those times when they felt productive, like you were as close to making peace with him as you could, you’d try to stick, like you had a halfway decent poker hand, and try to remind yourself the next conversation might not go as well. And then you came to an opening, one where it seemed like there might be the tiniest chance for reconciliation, even though he didn’t say it, he didn’t not say it.
You imagine yourself in the office of couples therapist number three, who asks you both what your goals are. Your husband says he wants you in his life, that’s all he knows. You say you want him in your life too, but there’s still one point on which you can’t budge: monogamy. The third couples therapist, who because they are currently imaginary, is blessedly not shitty, asks the husband if he can be open to that, if he would be willing to discuss finding ways to reconfigure the relationship that would satisfy you both, within that confine. Your husband hesitates but says he would at least be willing to discuss that, if you are willing to explore any and all options for building something entirely new. You say I think so? Are you? He says I think so? You both giggle like you used to. There hasn’t been a lot of giggling together over the last year, which is to say there’s been no giggling. Giggling seems hopeful. You are profoundly fearful that the trust you once had can never be rebuilt, not with him, not with anyone. You are profoundly fearful that you’ll never find your way back to each other now, you are profoundly fearful of a life without him, you are profoundly fearful . . . you are profoundly fearful. You once drove across the country with a dude you barely knew, in a car with a broken rearview mirror that cost him fifty bucks. Are you not going to try one more time with your husband of fifteen years, if he’s open to it?
If you can’t wait a minute longer to make a decision, then just make a fucking decision.
If you decide to trust that god has you covered, turn to page not-likely hundred.
If there’s no question that you’d try again with your husband if you’re actually still open to it after X time has passed, if he’s actually still open to it after reading this, turn to some distant and imaginary future where you both have no questions about anything.
If you need to know how it turns out right now, please wait for one of you to die.