Things That Only You Know

At times I find it scary to think that no one knows my husband better than me, with all the hidden passages in his mindset, his controversy, his true reactions to events and people. We’ve been together for almost a decade. What he was before he met me is what he no longer is and I am only a partial reason for the change. There were other variables to it – becoming a parent, settling into a more domestic life, getting a taste of what financial crisis is both in his business and our family budget.

People only get to see the sides of him he chooses to show. I get to see more with that internal look I’m allowed to take when no one else can witness his true personality. What he really is like when he can relax, protected by the walls of our home, when all the masks are taken off. I’ve seen deeper layers, both good and bad, and maybe that’s the key basis of the intimacy that two people share when sharing their lives.

I’ve seen him in vulnerability and despair his usual manliness conceals from others outside home. I’ve seen his softer side when he melts from the affection for me and our son, those occasional moments we all have when love fills us up to the edge and begins to overflow. I’ve seen manifestation of surprising cruelty, that emerges from darker depth, hurts me badly, and retreats as suddenly, leaving hurt feelings in me and painful penance in him. On days he acts like I’m a stranger whose presence is to be tolerated, I withdraw and console myself by thinking – this too shall pass. It’s like two different people coexist and fight for air in the same person, one or the other occasionally wins but mostly they are both subdued and controlled.

Sometimes I wish I didn’t know or see what no one but me gets to witness. But frequently I’m exultant that I’m the only one who gets treated like THAT, the way he worries about me, how he still expresses gratitude for having met me, for having me in his life. I guess you have to go in all the way, even if it means learning to deal with a few unpleasant surprises that all of us have but choose to hide, and only intimacy allows them to come up to the surface. Like he knows me and deals with me in my not so stellar moments… It’s the connection you want to deny, but it is there, stronger than any “marital glue” you can imagine, for those secrets, that naked honesty of feeling you share chains you together, making you one.