Page 44 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8
Now I let myself wonder about his life before me. Maybe I’m not his first wife? He’s never really said. I never really asked. I thought that meant I was the first for certain, but the longer I live with him the less I know him. The less certain I am.
Maybe this is something he does every few years. Find some young, dumb creature, seduce her, shower her with jewels and clothes, then trade her in for a new one.
If that’s true, then what I can’t understand is why he married me.
I thought he loved me. That’s the very sad thing. I thought that because I loved him, he loved me, and it never occurred to me that it might not be true, even though he didn’t say the words.
I thought he was showing me every time he touched me. I thought the diamond ring he slipped on my finger when we were naked, in his infinity pool on the roof of his penthouse in Singapore, was the evidence. I thought it was love, the way he looked at me that first night. I convinced myself I was different. Why would he keep me with him all day every day from that moment on if it weren’t?
But he’s never said he loves me; I just decided he did.
So much of this relationship has been in my head, in my heart. I can see myself now for the fool I was. I saw a dangerous man with tattoos, and wanted to believe he would have a heart of gold. I saw a man who was aloof, mysterious and decided I could decode him, never allowing myself to believe there was nothing before behind that hardness.
I saw a field of red flags and decided they were roses. Because it was what I wanted, what I craved. I wanted to mold this man into the fantasy I desired, but you cannot reshape a mountain.
Only in the last six months did I start to question it, and to my shame it was because he wasn’t paying attention to me. I could accept all of it—the mystery surrounding his work, his past and his feelings. That sex was a replacement for discussions of emotion or romance. Gifts instead of words of love.
I could accept it all, as long as I was sure he belonged to me.
As long as his obsessive attention insulated me, I could accept the fantasy. Believe it wholeheartedly.
I was happy until I realized he didn’t feel the same way I did. Until I realized I couldn’t simply rest on my belief that when I saidI love you, and he responded with sex, it didn’t mean for certain he loved me.
It was the distance that made me tug the thread.
The dissolution of the fantasy didn’t mean I no longer loved him; it was only that I could suddenly see he didn’t really love me.
Once I accepted that I started to realize…
It wouldn’t last.
I’m scared of what that means. I’m scared to ask too many questions.
Part of me would rather wonder forever if he did love me, than know for certain he didn’t.
And so I drive myself mad. Day after day.
“I’m surprised because in the last six months you’ve been home a handful of days and you certainly haven’t cooked.”
“I missed you.” My heart hits my sternum, and lurches up into my throat. “I wanted to have dinner with you.”
Why am I still so susceptible to him? Why did that make me hope?
I guess I should be relieved that even after all this time the pull to him is so powerful. If it wasn’t I might hate the girl who left the charity event with him that night, a little more than I do now. That girl with her eyes full of stars, about to embark on her very first night of wildness.
But I still feel like her when I look at him sometimes. Especially when I look at his hands and remember all the wicked ways he’s ever touched me.
Great sex isn’t a marriage, alas.
If it were, we’d be the happiest people on the block.
I want to take what he’s just said at face value, but the small, mean part of me that finds everything he does suspicious and painful simply can’t.
It wasn’t always like this. No, when we were first together it was fire and stars and beauty that obsessed me in ways I could never explain. It made my art feel insufficient for the first time in my life. I’d never loved anything but art until him.
He told me I was beautiful; he told me my art was special. That I was special. My parents are such lovely, sweet people but have always been worried about me getting a big head or dreaming too much. Dragos made it his mission to make me feel powerful, talented and particularly singular.
After a lifetime of taking in the importance of work ethic and practicality, a man who showered me with praise, gifts and affection like none of them were in short supply, or anything I had to learn was thrilling.
