The App

I didn’t even like him at first. That should have been the answer. Instead it became the question.

We met on an app. He was fine. Normal. Unremarkable in a way that felt safe after the musician, after the chaos, after years of choosing men who burned bright and left scorch marks. Fine felt like progress. Unremarkable felt like mature.

He also had a girlfriend. I didn’t know that. Found out later. The way you always find out. Not a confession. A discovery. A phone left unlocked. A name that didn’t add up. The careful arithmetic of lies that eventually fails to balance.

We figured each other out. Sat in his car and compared notes like two people who’d been robbed by the same person. Which I suppose we had. He’d been lying to both of us. But by then I was already in. Already invested. Already telling myself the story I needed to believe. He chose me. He ended it with her. He wants this.

Red flags look different when you’re the one holding them. From the outside they’re obvious. Neon. Unmissable. From the inside they’re wallpaper. You stop seeing them because you’ve decorated around them.

He wanted kids. That was the thing that tipped it. I’d wanted to be a mother since the abortion at eighteen. Five years of carrying that. And here was someone saying yes. Let’s do this. Let’s build something.

I confused shared goals with shared values. He wanted kids because that’s what you do. I wanted kids because something inside me was reaching for the only love I’d never been shown and needed to create it for myself.

Same destination. Completely different reasons for wanting to get there.

Looking back, every single thing I needed to know about that man was available in the first three months. The girlfriend. The ease with which he lied. The way he could look someone in the eye and build a separate reality.

I saw it all. I married it anyway.

Because fine felt like progress. And I was so tired of burning.