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“I didn’t kick you out, Aiden,” Freya says, her voice tight. “I asked for some space.” I exhale slowly, trying not to be defensive, to betray how much being asked to leave hurt. “You had a bag packed for me, Freya, and an airplane ticket—”
“Well, the past few months, while things became…strained between us, my anxiety’s often been high.” I thought I could fix it before she noticed, before she started asking questions and pushing me for answers.
Tell her that it’s damn near impossible to relax enough to feel aroused or stay aroused or finish, that if you increased your anxiety prescription dosage, it would be even worse. Tell her.
“Why didn’t you tell me, Aiden?” “Because it’s not just my anxiety, Freya. It’s…” I exhale shakily, flexing my hands, running them through my hair. “It’s that my anxiety’s…affected my sex drive. I didn’t know how to talk about one without confessing the other, so I kept it to myself. And I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.”
“I think I was scared to admit it to myself, how serious it had gotten, let alone to Freya.”
There’s a lie we’ve been told in our culture that our romantic partner’s attunement to our emotions and thoughts should be nearly psychic, and that is the barometer of our intimacy. If we feel like they aren’t ‘getting’ us, we reason that we’ve stopped having that magical intimate connection. “But that’s not the case.
“You’re saying we’ve changed?” She tips her head. “Haven’t you?” Freya shifts on the couch. “I hadn’t really thought about it, but yes. Obviously we’ve changed since we were in our twenties.”
“And perhaps your patterns for practicing and cultivating intimacy haven’t changed with you,” Dr. Dietrich says. “Haven’t accommodated your dreams and your desires, your mental health and your emotional needs.”
Unfortunately, that’s how this starts. Messy and overwhelming and hard to sort out. But guess what? You chose each other today. You set aside your busy schedules, forked over hard-earned money, and said you believe in each other enough to show up and try. So pat yourselves on the back.”
“Great. Socks off—oh, well look at that.” Dr. Dietrich bends and unfolds the twister mat, wiggling her socked feet inside her Birkenstocks. “You’re both wearing sandals without socks. Interesting.”
“On the floor, then,” Dr. Dietrich says, scooting her chair back. “Let the games begin!”
“Right foot to green.” “That’s cruel,” Freya mutters. “I’m ruthless.” Dr. Dietrich evil-laughs. “But it’s for your own good.”
Freya reaches with her right foot, until she’s snug beneath me, tucked against my groin. I close my eyes and picture pressing a kiss to her neck, biting between her shoulder blades. I shift to reach my green circle, wedging my thigh between Freya’s.
Need tightens my body, a hot ache building low in my stomach that surprises me...
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“I suppose I’ll just have to ask you a question, and once I have your answer, I’ll pick somewhere new for you to go.” “What?” Freya squeaks. “Tell me one thing you love about Aiden.” “Besides his ass?”
“Freya, be serious.” “Aiden, we’re playing Twister and in a more adventurous position than we’ve ever—”
“One thing you love about your wife.” “She lives out her love, so you can’t help but feel it. The moment I knew Freya loved me, I knew it. I didn’t have to guess.
“I looked into her eyes, and I saw love,” I whisper past the knot in my throat. “I felt love. And I want that back. I want to feel love with Freya again.”
Freya and I stand, then drop back onto the sofa, our bodies landing a little closer than they were when we started. I try not to notice, to place weight in it. If Freya does, she doesn’t show it.
“About that word, fair…the idea of ‘fair’ in a marriage, any relationship, I mean it’s impossible. No marriage is fair. It’s complementary. The idea of ‘fair’ is absurd at best, ableist at worst.”
“Ableist,” Dr. Dietrich says. “Because saying a relationship has to be ‘fair’ implies only a certain balance and distribution of skills and aptitudes is valid. It upholds an arbitrary, damaging idea of ‘normal’ or ‘standard’ as requisite for fulfilling partnership. When in reality, all you need is two people who love what the other brings and share the work of love and life together.”
we protect our spouses from things that cause actual harm—abuse, violence—not our inherent vulnerabilities and needs. Those are there for them to love and complement. If not,” she says pointedly, “it comes at the cost of our intimacy, our connection…our love.”
“It’s been…months. I’m not sure what came first—my sense that Aiden was working a lot more or that he didn’t initiate the way he used to. So I felt rejected. Like he didn’t want me.
The day I came home and you had my bag packed for the cabin, I was ready to tell you.”
“A relationship is like a body, and without the oxygen of communication, it can only last so long when one person pulls away and deprives it as much as it seems you have.
it’s where I’ve hidden when I haven’t known how to be the husband I want to be to Freya.
Dr. Dietrich’s admonition, that I’ve been suffocating our relationship with my behavior, when all I’ve wanted was to protect us from the outside world’s indiscriminate cruelty and threats—it’s so fucking defeating.
Stay and fight for her. Fight to bring myself back to a place in which I know in my soul how much she and I—despite our deep differences—belong together. Fight to feel once again close and intimate with the woman I love with every fiber of my being…
You give her time, tell yourself things will quiet down, and before you know it, things have gotten too quiet, then you have papers in your office, and not the kind you grade.”
Tragedy is built—it has a structure. And if that’s not the ending you want, then you get out of that trajectory. You change the narrative.”
“Stunning,” I whispered against her neck. She smiled. I felt it against my temple. “You’re humoring me.” “I like listening to you. I’m just a little distracted by this very lovely woman in my arms.”
Like Orpheus, I looked back. I looked back at the hell I knew as a kid and felt the flames lick higher, fear grabbing me by both hands. And I dragged Freya there with me.
I felt the mattress dip, and my traitorous lungs breathed him in, ocean-water clean.
Stay strong, Freya. Don’t you dare give in. One knowing compliment. His hand touching yours. Fingers brushing is not romantic or sensual or tempting or emotional.
I’m overflowing with unspent love and affection that hasn’t gone into my intimate life in months, and I bite back tears because this feels dangerously good.
“I wondered if you’d want to—” He clears his throat. “Whenever you’re done, that is. With your patients. I wondered if you’d want to get ice cream—that is, have an ice cream date…with me.”
“Why?” He stares at me unblinkingly. “You know why.” “I need the words,” I whisper. “Because I miss you. Because I know dessert for dinner makes you happy and—” His voice catches. He stares down at his shoes. “And I just want you to be happy, Freya.”
My heart flies in my chest as his words sink in, as I try to battle how weak I feel, how readily I want to throw myself at him and trust that this means we’re on our way and we’ll be okay.
I walk with Aiden out to our car. Like always, he gets my door. Like always.
“Hm.” I stare at the massive ice cream menu, frowning. Aiden crosses his arms and frowns at it, too. “Hm.”
He’s flirting with me. Aiden is…despicably good at flirting. He wears his charm like he wears his clothes—with a genetically predetermined comfort and grace. And when he leans close and drops his voice, when his sea-blue eyes glitter and a dark, rakish lock of hair falls onto his forehead, he turns me into a big, gooey, doe-eyed puddle.
“It’s a very complex equation that allows me to calculate how long it’ll take you to pick two flavors for your ice cream cone, before you decide you like mine better.”
“Stop flirting with me. I need to pick my flavors.”
There’s a pause, before Aiden’s knuckles brush mine. “That’s what you said on our first date.”
I was out with you, Freya Bergman, this knockout of a woman who was radiant—passion and vitality lighting you up from a place so deep within that I wanted desperately to know. A woman who painted her toes electric pink and sang along to music blasting from the outdoor speakers and stole my vanilla ice cream.”
“You felt like the missing part of my life.”
“I don’t remember what you wore or the precise date. I just remember standing next to you, looking into your eyes and knowing I was…exactly where I was supposed to be.”
I blink up at the menu, indecision swarming me. I glance over at Aiden helplessly. He smiles, then turns toward the cashier and says, “Two scoops of vanilla in a cup, please, then chocolate peanut butter swirl and salted caramel on a waffle cone.”
Our fingers thread tighter as he says, soft enough for only me to hear, “For old times’ sake.”
On a hop and spin he saves it, then straightens out and gives me that I can’t believe I live with a slob like you look that’s so habitual, it sends a pang of bittersweetness tearing through me.
