My Husband

by Maud Ventura

“We need to find a moment to talk.” Then, after a short pause, he adds, “It’s important.” I’m frozen, unable to say a word. It’s over.

I’m in love with my husband. Or maybe I should say: I’m still in love with my husband.

My husband has no name; he is my husband, he belongs to me.

I like starting points. When everyone is in their rightful place in a world that makes sense.

How would I explain to him why I have a solitaire diamond that’s practically identical to the one he gave me the day he proposed?

“I’ve never done anything but wait outside the closed door.”

Is it bizarre to feel tenderness toward my husband’s dandruff?

For years my husband has called me “sweetheart” while I yearn to be a femme fatale.

No one can see my neuroses except me. The way I see myself is not how other people see me. Everything is okay. I belong here.

The idea that Nicolas knew him during a time when I hadn’t yet met him makes me slightly dizzy. More generally, the idea that my husband existed before meeting me is surreal, even revolting.

Lol

My husband concludes by thanking Nicolas and Louise for contributing to his birthday gift. In fact, he’s wearing his new watch tonight. But not a word of thanks to me for having organized the surprise, sent the invitations, reserved the space, paid the security deposit, chosen the watch, washed the fifty champagne flutes at four in the morning.

So my husband thinks his best friend is married to a pineapple, while he married a clementine. He lives with a winter fruit, a banal and cheap fruit, a supermarket fruit. A small, ordinary fruit that has none of the indulgence of the orange nor the originality of the grapefruit. A fruit organized into segments, practical and easy to eat, precut, ready for use, proffered in its casing.

Jeez

I want to get a reaction out of him.

JEEZ

I’m in a bad mood. Wednesday is an orange day, like a clementine. Since this morning, I’ve been taunted by several objects with an orange hue: my mandarin-scented daytime lotion, my watchband, the grated carrots for tonight’s dinner in the fridge.

Lol

Each new person who enters into our life is an additional dilution of his attention, a dilution of him, and I’m horrified by this. The energy he expends toward others hurts me: it tells me that I am not enough for him.

Marriage is all about compromise. But why did I have to be the one to adapt?

When I arrive, my husband isn’t there. I’m early, it’s not 1:00 yet. But my first thought is that he’s not coming. He’s left me for good now that he’s realized I’m a cold mother and an overly demanding wife.

Ok loooool

I notice my husband’s friendly tone with the waitress when she brings our lunch. What could account for such familiarity? Are they already sleeping together? Is that why he brought me to this restaurant? Does it excite my husband to introduce his wife to his mistress? What a perverse setup.

In other words, they are suggesting that he could have done better than me.

I think you’ve got it all wrong. Your husband is the infatuated one. Not you. You don’t even really love him.”

Oh!

Tonight, however, the roles we perform are unambiguous: we are two parents having dinner with their children, a classic family portrayal. I play the mother and he the father. And I miss my husband.

In reality, encouraging my children’s sleep is an egotistical mission, calculated for my own purposes, so that I can spend several hours alone with my husband each night.

Miserable and powerless, I witness the transformation of our couple into a family.

I love our children, that goes without saying. I love them, but still, I would rather have not had them. I love them, but I would rather have lived alone with my husband. Today, I think I can say with certainty that I could survive the death of one of my children, but not of my husband.

Ok...

He repeated a hundred times that “Day by Day” was the most beautiful love song ever written.

The terrible truth was laid bare: his love for me was still growing two years after we met, and he found this variation of sentiment normal.

“If we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable that we will never be so.”

I saw my husband become so used to my presence that he no longer found it miraculous.

I stand up so that he doesn’t notice my tears and go to boil some water to make myself another tea. The sound will cover up that of my tears (even if this kind of crying is generally silent). When my husband talks to me about the rain or sun, when he doesn’t take my hand, when he turns me into a clementine, when he keeps his eyes open during a kiss, I am as vulnerable as a sixteen-year-old—as a six-year-old, even.

Now this morning’s yellow joy appears to me in its true form. It’s not the yellow of the natural light of day. It’s not the yellow of the sun and photosynthesis. It’s the artificial light of an electric lamp. It’s the yellow of lies, of adultery and hypocrisy.

That’s why I never feel guilty for being unfaithful: How could I, when I do it out of love for my husband? Plus, I know how to set limits: I’ve never cheated on my husband on any day but Thursday. It’s not the color of betrayal for nothing.

He must always be the one to make the first move. Masculine desire is fragile.

I’m struck by this when we stand up to get more coffee: my husband’s chair is perfectly centered. Mine, on the other hand, is turned to the left, toward my husband’s.

I think it’s essential that a couple’s arguments always be about love.

Unfortunately, my husband trusts me.

Recording our private conversations seems perfectly reasonable to me: these words were meant for me, why shouldn’t I be able to listen to them again?

When my husband doesn’t take my hand, when he turns me into a clementine, when he doesn’t ask me about my day, when he closes the shutters and draws the curtains before going to bed, when he interrupts me, when he forgets the name of a coworker I tell him about often, when he doesn’t seem particularly eager to see me again, when he lets go of my hand in the street, when he doesn’t answer one of my calls, when I catch him with his eyes open during a kiss: those moments set my marriage to a sad soundtrack.

He would be the same person without his humor or without his generosity, but not without his charisma, his introversion, or, of course, his contradictions.

It’s as though he’s always struggling against his true nature.

I once made the mistake of asking my husband what three words would best characterize me. He responded without much hesitation: very beautiful, cold, in love, observant.

I am moved and jealous at the same time. I can’t remember the last time my husband made the effort to switch up the paper or the color of the label for each of my presents. For me, he plans weekends in Venice, nights in a hotel, romantic dinners, outings to the opera or the theater: certainly lovely and thoughtful, but nothing that keeps, and certainly nothing that comes in colorful wrapping paper. On top of it, he’s never made me a cake or hung garlands in the trees for my birthday.

Jeez

I started moving my husband’s things because I missed him. I continued because he needed to be punished and because he deserved it.

What would you say to growing our family? A third child, what do you think?”