“You Love Me”

So sick of my mistreatment - the nagging, the silent treatment, the imagined slights - I made a decision: I would ignore her. I would act as though she was not there.

The mornings were easy. My job started early, much earlier than she arose, so I was out of the house with no contact. But upon my return, I had to remind myself, day after day, of my plan to make her feel as unimportant as she considered me.

I talked to and played with the kids. I made their tea. I read to them at bedtime. And when they were asleep, and only she and I were awake in the house, I remained silent. She did not aks me questions which I did not have to answer. We sat and watched the TV screen, seemingly oblivious of the other person in the room.

This farce carried on for three or four nights. Not a long time, no, but for someone as jovial as I it was a nightmare. Was she not learning the lesson? Had I not been overt enough in the doling out of her own medicine?

And then she came to me. She smiled. She took me in her arms. In a tone that told me she had not beleived it in the previous ten years, that it had only dawned on her in these past few days, she said:

‘You really do love me, don’t you?’

I was too dumbfounded to voice my thought: I have spent half-a-week completely ignoring you and you think that is love?

That’s how I knew it was over.