Free Love the One You're With by Emily Giffin Page A

perhaps, but that’s the thing about love—even slight differences are readily apparent, marked by small but irrefutable changes in behavior. Little things, like instead of calling me right back, he’d wait a few hours, sometimes even a full day. He started going out with the boys on a regular basis again, and joined an ice hockey intramural team that played on Saturday nights. We began to watch television at night rather than just talk, and sometimes he was too tired for sex, unfathomable in our early days when he’d often wake me up in the middle of the night, touching me everywhere. And when we did make love, there was all too often a feeling of remoteness afterward. A disconnect as he’d roll away from me or stare into space, lost in his own, private thoughts, another mysterious place.
    “What are you thinking?” I’d ask, a question both of us once posed ad nauseam, the other answering with exacting detail. A question that now seemed to set him on edge.
    “Nothing,” he’d snap.
    “Nothing?” I’d say, thinking that such a thing is impossible. You’re always thinking something .
    “Yes, Ellen. Nothing, ” he’d say as I frantically took note that he wasn’t calling me by his usual pet form, Ellie. “Sometimes I’m just thinking nothing .”
    “Okay,” I’d say, determined to give him space or play it cool, all the while relentlessly, doggedly analyzing his every move, speculating about what was wrong. Did I get on his nerves? Was I too far from his ideal? Did he still have feelings for his ex-girlfriend, an Israeli artist six years his senior (which made her a dozen years more experienced than I)? Was I as good as she in bed? Did he love me as much as he once loved her—and more important, did he love me as much as he once loved me ?
    At first, these questions were all internal musings, but slowly they surfaced, sometimes in the middle of a heated argument, other times as I broke down in frustrated tears. I demanded assurances, fired off questions, painted him into corners, started arguments about everything and nothing. One night, when I was alone in his apartment, I even snooped through his drawers and read a few pages of his journal—the sacred book stuffed with cards and clippings, photos and musings. A book that he carried everywhere and made me feel a rush of love for him every time he cracked it open. It was a huge mistake—not because of what I found or didn’t find, but because I was left with an awful, hollow ache afterward, an almost unwashed feeling. I was that kind of girl now; we were that kind of couple. I tried to put it out of my mind and move on, but just couldn’t get past what I had done—what he had made me do. So, a few days later, I broke down and confessed, leading to an explosive fight in which I got him to admit that he didn’t believe he could ever make a permanent commitment. To me. To anyone.
    “Why not?” I said, filled with devastation and frustration.
    “Marriage just isn’t for me,” he said, shrugging nonchalantly.
    “Why not?” I said, pressing him for more. Always for more.
    He sighed and said marriage was essentially a contract between two people—and contracts are signed when people don’t fully trust one another. “Which clearly you don’t,” he said, throwing all the blame my way.
    I apologized and cried and told him that of course I trusted him and that I had no idea what had come over me and that I didn’t care about marrying him, I just wanted to be with him, forever.
    His expression became steely as he said, “I’m twenty-nine. I don’t want to talk about forever.”
    “Okay,” I said, feeling the onset of groveling. “I’m sorry.”
    He nodded and said, “Okay. Let’s just drop it, all right?”
    I nodded, pretending to be placated, and a few minutes later we made love and I convinced myself that everything would be fine. We were just going through a rough patch, a few growing pains, and I needed to be patient, ride the wave,