I had told Caroline enough to make her believe she understood my life.<\/p>\n
That was not the same as telling her the truth.<\/p>\n
I had described my marriage as something that had already come apart.<\/p>\n
I had spoken about the distance between Emma and me.<\/p>\n
I had made the problems sound settled, as though we were simply waiting for the practical details to catch up with what had happened emotionally.<\/p>\n
I had left out the parts that might have changed Caroline's understanding of me.<\/p>\n
The anniversary was one of those parts.<\/p>\n
I knew that if Caroline understood I had promised to meet Emma that evening, she might ask why I was still keeping that promise in place while spending time with her.<\/p>\n
She might ask what separated meant to me.<\/p>\n
She might ask whether Emma knew about us.<\/p>\n
Those were fair questions.<\/p>\n
I had avoided giving her a reason to ask them.<\/p>\n
I wanted Caroline to see me as a man moving out of a failed marriage, not as a man maintaining two different accounts of his life.<\/p>\n
I wanted her to trust the story I had offered.<\/p>\n
And I wanted that trust without having to earn it through honesty.<\/p>\n
I had done something similar with Emma, though the details were different.<\/p>\n
Emma knew we were having problems.<\/p>\n
She knew I had been difficult to reach at times.<\/p>\n
She knew there were things about the money we still needed to discuss.<\/p>\n
But she did not know that I had been telling Caroline our marriage was already finished.<\/p>\n
She did not know that I was hoping she would become the person who ended it.<\/p>\n
She did not know that the anniversary dinner had become part of a plan I was making to avoid responsibility.<\/p>\n
I had kept those things from her because I wanted her to continue believing there was still a husband trying to make things work.<\/p>\n
I had given each woman only the information that helped me maintain the relationship I wanted with her.<\/p>\n
I had not considered how unfair that was.<\/p>\n
Or perhaps I had considered it and decided the unfairness was worth the benefit.<\/p>\n
Either way, I had made the choice.<\/p>\n
I used to tell myself that the situation was complicated because I had feelings I didn't know how to handle.<\/p>\n
That explanation made it sound as though I was being pulled in different directions by forces beyond my control.<\/p>\n
But my feelings were not the only thing involved.<\/p>\n
There were promises.<\/p>\n
There were decisions.<\/p>\n
There were people who trusted me.<\/p>\n
There was information I had deliberately withheld.<\/p>\n
I could not reduce all of that to being confused about what I wanted.<\/p>\n
I knew what I wanted in the immediate sense.<\/p>\n
I wanted Caroline to remain close.<\/p>\n
I wanted Emma not to ask too many questions.<\/p>\n
I wanted the money problem to remain unresolved until I could find a way to explain it.<\/p>\n
I wanted the marriage to end without my having to be the person who ended it.<\/p>\n
Those wishes were not compatible.<\/p>\n
I knew that.<\/p>\n
Instead of choosing which desire I was prepared to give up, I tried to keep all of them alive through dishonesty.<\/p>\n
That was the real problem.<\/p>\n
I wanted the freedom to make choices without accepting the consequences those choices created.<\/p>\n
I wanted to be trusted by Emma while withholding the truth from her.<\/p>\n
I wanted to be trusted by Caroline while giving her an incomplete account of my marriage.<\/p>\n
I wanted both women to judge me by the person I described rather than the person I was being.<\/p>\n
That was not something either of them could fairly agree to because neither of them knew what I was asking.<\/p>\n
I had made the decision for them.<\/p>\n
The thought should have made me stop.<\/p>\n
Instead, I kept telling myself I needed more time.<\/p>\n
Time to understand my feelings.<\/p>\n
Time to decide what to do.<\/p>\n
Time to prepare for the conversation about money.<\/p>\n
Time to figure out how to explain the marriage to Caroline.<\/p>\n
There was always a reason to wait.<\/p>\n
And every reason protected the same thing.<\/p>\n
My ability to continue without being held accountable.<\/p>\n
I had become so focused on managing what each woman knew that I had stopped considering what either relationship would look like if it depended on the truth.<\/p>\n
I was afraid of that question because I suspected the answer.<\/p>\n
If Caroline knew everything, she might no longer want the relationship I had offered her.<\/p>\n
If Emma knew everything, she might no longer want the marriage I had been asking her to preserve.<\/p>\n
I could not know what either woman would decide.<\/p>\n
But I knew they deserved to make those decisions with the truth in front of them.<\/p>\n
I had been withholding it because I was afraid of losing what I wanted.<\/p>\n
That fear did not make the deception less deliberate.<\/p>\n
It only explained why I kept doing it.<\/p>\n
I wanted to believe I was protecting the possibility of a future.<\/p>\n
In reality, I was protecting the present arrangement, even though that arrangement depended on both women misunderstanding the same man.<\/p>\n
Me.<\/p>\n
I had told Caroline enough to make her believe she understood my life. That was not the same as telling her the truth. I had described my marriage as something … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38246,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38257"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38277,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38257\/revisions\/38277"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}