You Once Asked Me...

To the man I married,

You once asked me why I needed so much from you.

At least, that's how I remember it now.

Maybe you never used those exact words. Maybe it was simply the way you sighed when I wanted another hug. The way your face changed when I wanted to talk a little longer. The way you looked at me when I asked for one more kiss before you left for work. The way you made ordinary affection feel like another obligation on your list.

For a long time, I believed you.

I believed that perhaps I really was asking for too much.

Perhaps I really was too emotional.

Too sensitive.

Too needy.

Too attached.

I carried those words around like stones in my pockets.

I tried to become smaller so you wouldn't feel overwhelmed.

I tried to need less.

To ask less.

To cry less.

To hope less.

I thought that maybe if I became easier to love, you would finally love me with ease.

But something has happened over these past months.

I've begun watching healthy marriages.

Not perfect marriages.

Just healthy ones.

I've watched husbands reach for their wives without being asked.

I've watched wives smile because they know they're safe.

I've watched ordinary couples call each other during lunch simply because they wanted to hear the other person's voice.

And every time I see those little moments, I realize something that hurts and heals me at the same time.

I wasn't asking for too much.

I was asking my husband to be my husband.

That sentence alone has untied so many knots inside me.

I wasn't asking for grand gestures.

I wasn't asking you to become someone you weren't.

I simply wanted to feel chosen.

Again.

And again.

And again.

The way marriage quietly chooses the same person every ordinary day.

I wanted you to reach for my hand because you wanted to.

To kiss my forehead because you were glad I existed.

To look at me the way a husband looks at the woman he promised to love.

None of those things seem extraordinary anymore.

They seem... ordinary.

Beautifully ordinary.

I don't resent you for not giving me those things.

Resentment is too heavy to carry this far.

But I have stopped apologizing for wanting them.

There is a strange freedom in finally admitting that my heart was not defective.

It was simply hungry.

Hungry for the kind of love marriage was always meant to nourish.

Perhaps you genuinely experienced my heart as overwhelming.

Perhaps you genuinely felt trapped by the closeness I longed for.

I no longer need to argue with your experience.

But I also no longer have to deny mine.

Both things can exist at the same time.

You may have felt burdened.

I felt abandoned.

Neither sentence erases the other.

Today I don't write this letter because I need you to understand me.

I write it because I finally understand myself.

The woman you called needy was simply trying to love her husband.

She wasn't asking for perfection.

She was asking not to feel alone inside her own marriage.

I wish someone had told her sooner that there was nothing shameful about that.

Maybe she would have been gentler with herself.

I'm trying to be now.

— The woman who married you 💜