He's steady. He hugs me. He shows up. From the outside, it would look foolish to walk away.
But I feel like I've been emotionally holding my breath for years. When I try to talk about my feelings, it somehow becomes about what I'm doing wrong – that I'm too prideful, or that I need better boundaries. After a while, I stopped bring it up because I started questioning my own perception.
There's this quiet loneliness that sits beside me even when he's next to me. He loves me in the ways he knows how – and I don't think he's failing. I think something in me is starving. Not for drama. Not for chaos. For softness. For being fully seen. For exhaling.
I had a brief experience – nothing physical, nothing that crossed a line – but it woke something up in me. It was the first time I felt completely unguarded. No performance. No bracing. Just warmth and easy. And now i can't un-know that feeling.
I don't want to leave for another person. I think I want to leave because I don't want to live half-alive.
But then there's history. Loyalty. The fact that he isn't "bad". The idea that marriages go through seasons. The fear that maybe this is just me being restless. Or broken. Or chasing a fantasy.
I don't want to blow up a stable life just because I discovered what tenderness feels like.
I don't want to wake up in ten years and realize i stayed small to keep everything comfortable.
I don't know if this is a phase, a warning sign, or a reckoning. I just know I'm tired of pretending that "fine" is the same thing as fulfilled.