Ours is not the love you read about, the kind of fairy tales. There are no knights in shining armor, no princesses to rescue. This love would not awaken anyone from eternal slumber, nor is it the kind you would die to protect. No, our love is no fairy tale. But we are a golden couple none the less, as far as the public is concerned. I will never deny you, or put you needs after my own. No matter how my heart aches for another, I'll always stand by you. We need each other, maybe him more than I. So I sacrifice my own heart for yours and am the perfect wife. I know you want someone else, and you will forever be second in my thoughts. You give that brunette a look I once dreamed of receiving. She will always stand on your highest pedestal. She'll always be your highest priority, as will the bitterness that you lost her to your best friend when he finally realized the beauty that was before you both. I as well will keep a piece of my heart locked away for someone I once could have had.
It doesn't matter that we are both aware of our situation. We were too young to make the lifelong commitment that we rushed into. Both of us too naive to realize how quickly passion and lust fade. Let alone the pressure we felt from all sides we both felt. Our families and friends expected our union as destiny, and we were easily swayed. 5 years and two children later, our separate lives have become one. I'm afraid of life without you. I don't need you in the way I did at 17. But I do need the friendship and stability we have created. I do love you, but not nearly enough in the way that you want or deserve.
That's how I justify what I've been trying to tell you for almost two years now. The affair I've started with your childhood enemy is as forbidden as it is right. And my lack of guilt is what eats away the most at me. Your faithfulness has never been a question; you are too good, too righteous to engage in adultery. This should make me feel ashamed, licentious even. I don't. I'm in love with another. I know that you've had your suspicions. All of your accusatory glances, passive aggressive comments don't even make me flinch. I only regret that I'm not courageous enough to trade someone who used to be my prince charming, for my very own dark angel.
Neither you nor he asks anything implausible of me. Each of you wants love in your own right. You need my help holding our family together, caring for our children, supporting you in your business and political endeavors. He asks for my love, my nights, and whispered promises of someday. The tragedy is I am forced to break my vows to each of you to satisfy the other. I stretch myself too thin in trying to please the three of us. I will never be able to give either of you my full self, though he comes closer to my soul than you have in years. I don't blame you; I take all responsibility for our distant, detached relationship.
Every bone in my body wishes you were different, that you were a horrible person. Maybe if you were clingy, or controlling, or in any way abusive, my behavior would be justified. If I were less of a coward, then I could confront you and try to work through our issues, maybe resolve our ongoing, silent conflict. I will never be able to fully explain the method behind my madness. But I've become so accustomed to our life, our 'don't ask don't tell' policy of living. Explanation, at this juncture, just seems superfluous.
I'm writing this as you sleep peacefully next to me. It pains me to think that I will never give this to you, that I'll never be able to confront our unhappiness. Maybe I'm displacing my own malcontent onto you, justifying my affair with the fact that I am so sure that you are as disconsolate as I. I hope desperately that when you look into my eyes you see the brown you crave instead of my blue. Just as I see my Adonis' gray instead of your emerald green. I dream of a happier life, where I could have loved you as I imagined. Where neither of us sought comfort in the arms of another. But these are just dreams. Trifle invocations of an adulterous female. These kind of dreams never come true.