One night, we walked around Marina Bay.
He looked at the skyline.
“You seem different.”
“How?”
“Less compressed.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“Helpful.”
He thought.
“In Seattle, the last year, you always looked like you were explaining something.”
I stopped walking.
“What?”
“Like you had a lawyer in your head.”
I laughed.
“That’s weirdly accurate.”
“You were always preparing your case.”
I looked across the water.
Marina Bay Sands reflected in the dark surface.
“And now?”
“You look like you don’t need anybody to agree with you.”
That stayed with me.
Month eight, Theo visited.
He was quieter.
More observant.
He stood at my apartment window looking toward the port.
“You seem like yourself.”
I laughed.
“Todd said something similar.”
“What did you seem like before?” I asked.
Theo thought.
“Like somebody explaining to himself why something was fine.”
That hurt.
Because it was right.
I had spent almost a year narrating my own discomfort into harmlessness.
Petra is mature.
Damon is only a friend.
I’m not jealous.
This is normal.
Don’t become your father.
Trust your wife.
All reasonable thoughts individually.
Together, they became a story I used to stay in a situation that kept making me unhappy.
That realization also forced me to confront something less flattering.
Petra had failed me.
But I had failed myself too.
I stayed quiet too long.
I confused silence with trust.
I believed that being a good husband meant needing less.
I turned down Singapore because I believed sacrifice was evidence of commitment.
Then I secretly expected that sacrifice to create debt.
I never said, “If I turn this down, I need to feel that our marriage becomes the priority I’m choosing it to be.”
Instead, I said, “Family comes first.”
Then resented her when she didn’t understand the price I had attached privately.
That was not fair either.
Self-sacrifice can become manipulation even when nobody intends it that way.
You give something up.
Nobody asks what it cost.
You begin keeping score.
The other person doesn’t know a scoreboard exists.
Eventually you hate them for losing a game they didn’t know they were playing.
I did some of that.
Not all.
But enough that I needed to own it.
About ten months into Singapore, I started therapy.
Nothing dramatic caused it.
Suki mentioned she had a therapist.
I said I had never tried it.
She said, “That explains some things.”
I asked what things.
She refused to elaborate.
My therapist was a British woman named Claire who had lived in Singapore for fifteen years.
During our third session, she asked why I had turned down Singapore the first time.
“Marriage.”
“That isn’t a reason.”
“What?”
“Marriage is a category. What did you believe would happen if you accepted?”
I thought.
“Petra would be unhappy.”
“And?”
“She might not come.”
“And?”
“We might split up.”
Claire nodded.
“So you chose the marriage.”
“Yes.”
“Did Petra choose it too?”
I almost answered immediately.
Then stopped.
“That’s what bothered you.”
“Yes.”
“You felt you sacrificed something enormous to preserve the relationship while she continued behaving in a way that made you feel secondary.”
“Yes.”
Claire nodded.
“And instead of telling her the sacrifice had changed your emotional expectations, you waited for her to intuit them.”
I hated therapy.