I sat in the car after errands and didn't want to go home.
The groceries were in the back. The tank was full. I had twenty minutes before the chicken would start to smell. I just sat there in the parking lot of the store I go to every Tuesday and watched people walk to their cars with bags and keys and somewhere to be. I didn't want to be one of them yet. Going home meant walking into a room where I was already working.
I used to think I was good at this. Good at keeping a relationship warm. Good at noticing when the air went flat and fixing it before anyone else felt the drop. I thought that was love. Being the one who remembers. Being the one who asks. Being the one who carries the thing without calling it work.
I remember his mother's birthday. I buy the card. I remind him to call. I text his sister back when she asks about Thanksgiving because if I don't, the message sits there and then it's weird and then I have to fix that too. I suggest dinner on Thursday because if I don't, we eat at different times in different rooms and pretend that's normal. I bring up the thing we need to talk about because otherwise it sits in the corner for three weeks and grows a shape. I fill the silence when we're out with friends and he goes quiet. I ask the follow-up question. I laugh at the thing that wasn't that funny so the moment doesn't die.
Nobody asked me to do this. I just started doing it and then I never stopped.
My friend asked me last month how he's doing. I said "busy" before I even thought about whether that was true. He's not that busy. I just didn't want to explain the flatness. I didn't want to say out loud that we sit in the same room and I feel like I'm performing for two people. So I said "busy" and she nodded and we moved on and I felt this strange relief that the conversation was over. I had protected him from a question he didn't even know someone asked.
The other day he asked if I wanted tea. He was in the kitchen already, kettle on, and he called out like it was an afterthought. I felt this weird rush of gratitude. For tea. Like I'd won something. Like someone had finally seen me standing in the room. I said yes and sat there with the mug and felt stupid for being grateful. For tea. For a question that took two seconds.
That's the part I don't say out loud. The gratitude for ordinary things. The way I feel relieved when he notices one thing because it means I didn't imagine the whole setup. It means maybe I'm not the only one keeping the machine running. Maybe he sees it too. Maybe.
I stopped bringing things up. Not because I'm scared. Because I'm tired. Because every conversation about us starts with me saying we need to talk and ends with me explaining what I need and then reassuring him that he's not bad and then finding a way to make it okay so we can go to bed. I got efficient at avoiding disappointment. I learned which topics cost too much. I learned to swallow the thing before it became words.
I was on my phone at 11pm last Tuesday. Everyone was asleep. I typed "how do I make him want me" into the search bar like I was looking for a recipe. I wasn't planning to. It just came out. I sat there looking at the letters and felt this shame like I'd been caught stealing. Not because wanting him to want me was wrong. Because I was so exhausted from being the one who wants us, and I thought maybe there was a way to flip it. Maybe there was something I could do. Some move. Some angle. Some way to stop being the only one reaching.
I didn't want games. I didn't want to become mysterious or pull away or change into someone else. I just wanted to know if wanting can be brought back. If you can restart something that didn't break but just slowly went quiet.
I kept scrolling. I read things about making him chase you. About being less available. About becoming the woman he fell for again. None of it fit. I wasn't trying to win him. I was trying to stop feeling alone while someone was right there. I was trying to understand when I became the emotional employee of a company that never hired me.
We watched a show last week. I don't remember what it was. We were both scrolling. I looked up at some point and he was laughing at his phone and I was watching a scene I'd already lost track of and I thought about pausing it and asking if he wanted to actually watch. But that felt like work too. So I kept watching nothing and he kept laughing at something else and the show played through to the end.
I ate Thai food I don't even like because he wanted it and saying I wanted the Italian place felt like too much work. One more thing to manage. One more preference to explain. One more potential flat moment to lift up. So I ate the thing I didn't want and said it was fine.
I used to paint on weekends. I had supplies. I had a spot by the window. I don't remember when that stopped. I just know now my weekends are about catching up on the things I didn't do during the week because I was busy managing us. Catching up on sleep I didn't get because I was up late fixing a conversation that went wrong. Catching up on quiet that I never actually get because quiet now feels like a to-do list.
Silence used to feel good. Now it feels like work waiting. Silence means I haven't asked about his day yet. Means there's a conversation I should start. Means the room is getting cold and I'm the only one with a jacket. I fill it before it gets too empty. I always fill it.
I ignored it at first because I was tired of people explaining men like they had instructions. Like there was a manual. Then one day I read something. I found this thing online after searching around, not sure what I was even looking for. It wasn't about tricks. It just gave words to the thing I couldn't describe. The thing where you're holding everything and nobody asked you to. The thing where you keep the relationship alive and nobody sees the labor. I sat there reading and felt this strange relief that someone else had noticed the shape of it. Someone else had seen the invisible work and called it something.
I didn't tell him I read it. Nothing changed the next day. No miracle. No sudden shift where he started asking about my day or planning dates or filling the silences. That doesn't happen. What happened was smaller. I started noticing how much I was doing. I stopped carrying every conversation. I let a joke land flat at dinner with friends and didn't rush in to save it. I watched him sit in the awkwardness and realized he'd never had to sit in it before. Because I always fixed it. Because I was always there with the net.
I let a silence last longer than I normally would. It hurt. It felt like letting a plant die because you stopped watering it. But I wanted to see if he would pick up the can. I wanted to see if the silence would move him to say something. Anything.
He didn't. Not that time. He looked at his phone. The silence got big and uncomfortable and I felt my hands wanting to fix it. Wanting to ask a question. Wanting to bring up the thing we could talk about. Wanting to do my job. I didn't. I let it stay awkward. I let it be his turn.
Nothing changed immediately. The relationship didn't transform. He didn't suddenly see me differently. But my exhaustion became harder to ignore. It stopped being a background hum and started being a sound I couldn't turn down. I heard it when I suggested dinner again. I heard it when I bought another card for his mother. I heard it when I laughed at the not-funny thing to keep the moment alive.
I kept trying to restart us. I kept holding the keys. I kept starting the car and wondering why I was always the one with my hands on the wheel.
I never asked why I was the only one who knew we were parked.