When Snooping Gets Out Of Control

It might be something else that he doesn't believe: "She says he... but I blame her… " It was hard enough to tell him What Happened; hard enough to hope for a response as loving and compassionate as the one I thought he gave me. But the page tells me what he really thinks: "She asked for it."

Is it the words themselves that hurt so much? Or is it the way he's so carelessly bracketed them around me and my secrets? Is it that I regret having exposed those parts of me to begin with? I do know that all of this makes me wonder what he's really doing when I'm not around—or what he's really thinking when his mouth is closed and he's sitting, alone with his thoughts, writing.

"This is so unfair." He looks at me and reaches for my hand. "I don't really blame you. I feel totally misrepresented." But there's nothing he can say. I know that's how he feels. He wrote it for himself, so why on earth wouldn't it be what he feels?

"It's not like I'm really thinking when I'm writing." And that's what hurts the most: the uncensored, unbridled truth.

In the end, after all this talking and staring and shaking and crying, I still don't have the courage to get up and leave. I still love him, and I know he loves me. He's got to. How could he not?

The phone rings. "You should answer your phone," I say. He doesn't move—like he's trying to prove to me that he doesn't need to answer the phone, like I'm more important. It rings again. "You should answer your phone," I repeat, only this time I say it more like an order. On the third ring, he answers it. He retreats to his room, but doesn't close the door.

He makes calls, gets calls, arranges lunches, brunches, golf games, and dinner parties, booster-seating his way up to the table of whatever his idea of success is. Oh, I believe in him. And how! And while he's proving so earnestly that he’s someone to believe in, I've found substantial evidence that he doesn't believe in me.