When I met Carter, I noticed how carefully he looked at me.<\/p>\n
His eyes moved toward my hair.<\/p>\n
Then they returned to my face.<\/p>\n
For a moment, neither of us spoke.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether he was surprised by how uneven it looked in person.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether he felt sorry for me.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether he was thinking about the wedding.<\/p>\n
I stopped myself before I could turn his expression into an answer.<\/p>\n
I had come to hear what he had to say.<\/p>\n
I could not do that if I spent the entire conversation guessing what he was thinking.<\/p>\n
Carter sat down across from me.<\/p>\n
He looked tired.<\/p>\n
I probably did, too.<\/p>\n
Neither of us had slept well, and the morning had become something neither of us had expected.<\/p>\n
He looked at me again.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don't know what you want me to say, Rachel.\u201d<\/p>\n
I placed my hands on the table.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want you to tell me what you think.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI've told you. I think we're making this much bigger than it needs to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
I felt the familiar urge to defend myself.<\/p>\n
Instead, I asked him to explain.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy do you think that?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause we're supposed to get married today. Something happened to your hair, and you're upset. I understand that. But I don't understand why you're suddenly questioning everything we've planned.\u201d<\/p>\n
I listened until he finished.<\/p>\n
Then I spoke.<\/p>\n
\u201cI'm questioning whether I can move forward when I feel that I can't tell you how upset I am without having to defend the fact that I'm upset.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked down at the table.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat's not what I'm trying to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen help me understand what you are trying to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
He rubbed his forehead.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want us to get married. I want the day to go ahead. I want us to stop fighting about something we can't change.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to understand what happened, too. But I'm not fighting with you about my hair.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen what are we fighting about?\u201d<\/p>\n
I took a breath.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhether my feelings matter when they make things difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked at me.<\/p>\n
I could tell he had not expected that answer.<\/p>\n
For a moment, I felt afraid that I had said too much.<\/p>\n
Then I remembered that I had come here because I was tired of hiding what I meant.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know the wedding matters,\u201d I continued. \u201cI know we've spent months planning it. I know people are expecting us to go through with it. But I need you to understand that I can't use those things as a reason to ignore what I'm feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carter leaned back.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never asked you to ignore your feelings.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou keep telling me about the schedule.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause there is a schedule.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople have made plans. We've made promises.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know that, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
My voice grew quieter.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I am the person who has to stand beside you and make those promises. I need to be sure I can make them honestly.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked away.<\/p>\n
I waited.<\/p>\n
I did not want to rush into another explanation.<\/p>\n
I wanted him to respond to what I had actually said.<\/p>\n
Finally, he asked, \u201cDo you think I don't love you?\u201d<\/p>\n
The question hurt because I knew how much I wanted to answer it.<\/p>\n
I wanted to say that I knew he loved me.<\/p>\n
I wanted to reassure him that I had never doubted it.<\/p>\n
But that would not have been completely honest.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I need to understand what love looks like between us when things are difficult,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
He stared at me.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat's a very complicated way of saying you don't trust me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn't say I don't trust you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou're questioning our entire relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI'm asking whether we can have an honest conversation about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He shook his head.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don't know how we're supposed to do that when you seem to have already decided something is wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
I felt the words settle between us.<\/p>\n
I had hoped that sitting together would make it easier to understand each other.<\/p>\n
Instead, we were still struggling to speak about the same thing.<\/p>\n
I wanted to talk about the way we handled fear, uncertainty, and disagreement.<\/p>\n
He wanted to know whether I still intended to marry him.<\/p>\n
Those questions were connected, but they were not identical.<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven't made a final decision about our future,\u201d I said. \u201cThat's why I'm here.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen what do you need from me?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI need you to listen without treating my uncertainty as something I'm doing to you.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was quiet.<\/p>\n
I continued before I could lose my courage.<\/p>\n
\u201cI need to know that if I say something is hurting me, you will try to understand before telling me why I shouldn't feel that way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carter looked down at his hands.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether he understood.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether I had explained it clearly enough.<\/p>\n
Then I stopped myself.<\/p>\n
I had explained it.<\/p>\n
I could not make him understand by finding increasingly perfect words.<\/p>\n
He had to be willing to hear them.<\/p>\n
After a while, he said, \u201cI didn't know you felt this way.\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked at him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI'm telling you now.\u201d<\/p>\n
He nodded, but he did not say anything else.<\/p>\n
I wanted him to ask another question.<\/p>\n
I wanted him to show curiosity about the part of me that was frightened and uncertain.<\/p>\n
I wanted him to acknowledge that I had not come there to hurt him.<\/p>\n
Instead, the silence returned.<\/p>\n
I sat with it.<\/p>\n
I did not rush to fill it.<\/p>\n
I did not apologize for making the conversation uncomfortable.<\/p>\n
Finally, Carter asked whether I was going to proceed with the wedding.<\/p>\n
I looked at him for a long moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can't answer that honestly until I know whether we're having the conversation I came here to have.\u201d<\/p>\n
He closed his eyes briefly.<\/p>\n
\u201cRachel, I don't know what else to say.\u201d<\/p>\n
I believed him.<\/p>\n
At least, I believed that he did not know what to say at that moment.<\/p>\n
That did not mean I had to pretend the conversation had given me what I needed.<\/p>\n
I stood slowly.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we need more time.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked up.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou're really going to postpone everything?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven't decided what happens to everything. I've decided I can't make this promise while I'm still trying to convince myself that my questions don't matter.\u201d<\/p>\n
He did not answer.<\/p>\n
I wanted him to stop me.<\/p>\n
I wanted him to say that he understood.<\/p>\n
I wanted him to offer a reason to believe we could learn to speak to each other differently.<\/p>\n
But I could not make those words come from him.<\/p>\n
I gathered my bag.<\/p>\n
The folded paper inside it pressed against my hand.<\/p>\n
I had brought three questions with me.<\/p>\n
I was leaving without all the answers.<\/p>\n
Still, I understood something I had not understood before.<\/p>\n
I could not build a marriage by doing all the listening, all the explaining, and all the reassuring myself.<\/p>\n
Whatever happened between Carter and me, it would have to involve both of us.<\/p>\n
I walked away without making a final judgment about his character.<\/p>\n
I did not know everything he felt.<\/p>\n
I did not know everything he feared.<\/p>\n
But I knew I had asked for a conversation, and we had not yet found our way through it.<\/p>\n
That was enough reason not to pretend the problem had disappeared.<\/p>\n
When I met Carter, I noticed how carefully he looked at me. His eyes moved toward my hair. Then they returned to my face. For a moment, neither of us … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40289,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40307","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\/40307","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=40307"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40327,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40307\/revisions\/40327"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}