Suspicious

I return home from work wielding a bright bouquet of cheap flowers. I wanted the more authentic ones, not dyed candy colors, but they were wilted in the front of the grocery store--the more adult bouquets also contain lilies, which our kitten would eat until he needed a vet visit. I choose artificial petals over dead cats.

Ambers eyes open in joy, then narrow in suspicion. "Why are you giving me flowers?"

"I love you, and I wanted to." Also, we were both doing poorly over the weekend, which had been dragging me down. Now that we were feeling better, I wanted to commemorate it.

"Did you do something?"

"Why would I do anything?" I ask.

"So, you are just giving me flowers? Because you love me?"

"Yes?"

They look dubious. "Seems like you are being nice to me," they accuse. "It's suspicious."

"That is my line," I say. "Why do we have such trouble receiving love? We are highly lovable people."

Our childhoods were not beset by absent parents and friendlessness. I doubt we were made to feel unloveable, and those who claimed to love us didn't go out of their way to hurt or neglect us.

I would take the insult at the implication I had not loved my wife well enough to have it reign unquestioned in their marrow. Amber is, if anything, a better partner to me than I am to them, and I still have pangs of "So, you still love me?" How can I hold it against them that they playfully look askance at flowers?

Over thirteen years, most spectacular and devoted, all of which have been adoring and communicative, and Amber still mistrusts a gift that comes without much agenda. I would say it is a matter of time, but we have been married longer than most of my serious previous relationships combined. Adding in the time we've been together eclipses all my relationships since my junior year in high school.

Even in my darkest, most anxious moments, I fear Amber would be better off without me. It is born of how utterly I love them, as much as I hate thinking this (and I do not often, usually predicated on physical health issues turning mental -- not anything objective).

Flowers will not do it, though this was not what I wanted of them. My love is making my wife's life easier and more comfortable daily. Their demonstration is bettering our lives and helping my writing, my dearest passion.

I am not the man I was when I met them. We have sculpted the other.

Attrition has yet to convince the other we are sincere. We know this intellectually, but our attachment styles have never remained secure long enough.

last watched: Futurama
reading: Absolution