Over the following year, the difference between our expectations became harder to ignore. We moved into a slightly larger apartment, divided the household expenses, and talked vaguely about buying a place someday. I handled most of the planning because I was better at comparing insurance policies, tracking payments, and making sure things were repaired before they became expensive. Emily called me the responsible one, usually affectionately, although I began to hear impatience beneath the joke.
She wasn't without good qualities. When my father had a minor medical scare, she came with me to visit him and brought food my mother could reheat after long days. She remembered the names of my coworkers' spouses and could make an awkward gathering feel comfortable within minutes. During the good stretches, she was warm, funny, and fiercely encouraging about my smaller achievements. The difficulty wasn't that every memory was bad; it was that the good memories kept persuading me to explain away what was happening in between.
Jake's presence grew during those in-between stretches. He started an adventure travel blog, posting beautiful photos from low-budget trips and describing every missed paycheck as proof that freedom required courage. Emily followed each update, sometimes reading the captions aloud at dinner. She'd say that she envied people who refused to become ordinary and that she wished we did more unexpected things.
I suggested we go somewhere neither of us had been that weekend. She said she had a lot on her plate and couldn't disappear without planning, then spent Saturday afternoon with friends at a brewery where Jake was apparently telling stories from his latest trip. When I asked how it had been, she described it as the most spontaneous fun she'd had in weeks. I didn't say anything about the contradiction, because I was beginning to dread the familiar argument more than I wanted to win it.
On another occasion, I surprised her with tickets to a small live show featuring a band she liked. She thanked me but said the timing was inconvenient because Jake had invited a group to a festival out of town. We ended up selling the tickets, and I spent that evening working late while her photos appeared online. In one picture she stood beside Jake with her arm around his waist, smiling into the camera under colored lights.
When I mentioned the photo, she said everybody had been crowded together and I was reading a romantic meaning into a normal pose. Perhaps she was right about that particular photograph. What I couldn't explain away was how little curiosity she showed about why it hurt me. We were becoming experts at arguing about individual details while refusing to look at the whole picture.
I tried changing my approach. Instead of asking about Jake, I asked whether she felt connected to me and whether there was something our relationship needed that neither of us was acknowledging. She said I was overthinking because things had gotten comfortable, and comfort wasn't a crime. When I suggested counseling before our resentments became permanent, she laughed and said we weren't a married couple trying to save a house and three children.