Fair? There is no fair.

"I feel pressure," she said, twitching nervously. "You're being so good to me... you're doing and being everything I ever wanted and hoped and prayed and dreamed you'd be. And part of me wants you... and part of me wants to want you... but part of me is still so terrified of you. Of getting close to you, and being hurt by you again."

"Pressure?" I asked. "I'm not demanding anything from you. How am I pressuring you? What am I doing wrong?"

"You're not pressuring me, and you're not doing anything wrong. It's pressure I feel inside.

"There is duty and obligation," she said. "You're my husband. I should come back to you. It's the moral thing to do. It's expected. But I don't want to.

"And... how we are right now... it's not fair. You're being so good to me, meeting all my emotional needs, and I'm not giving you love or sex. I have all these rules and boundaries that you have to live up to, and you're giving me none. You're in love with me, and you desire me, and I don't feel the same way about you. It's not fair," she repeated.

"Fair? Fair? I'll tell you what isn't fair, Beautiful.

"It wasn't fair for me to live in depression for a decade, giving you little love and less hope. It wasn't fair for me to go looking for love in someone else. It wasn't fair for me to fall in love with someone else and not have those feelings for you. It wasn't fair for me to mourn the loss of the affair for two years. Fair?" I was angry now. "I treated you unfairly. I treated you badly. Our whole marriage wasn't fair."

"If I have to live like this, giving endlessly to you with little in return for the next ten years, then we'd finally get up to fair. Only then would you maybe owe me something. I'm not keeping score, you know. Because in my scoreboard, it's five thousand days of love on your side and seventy-two on mine. So don't you dare feel guilty and feel that it's not fair.

"Of course it's not fair right now. That's just balancing the unfairness you had to live with for so long."

She looked at me hard. "Do you really mean that? Do you really think that?"

"Yes. Yes, I do," I affirmed.

She held me for a long time, softly, gently, warmly. I murmured loving, extravagent words in her ear, and gently, slowly caressed her arms and back while holding her closely. I inhaled the fragrance of her curly hair, touching it tentatively with my fingers.

Then she pulled away, and said goodnight, and went to bed, and I left her again.