▸ Column · Modern grounded — Diana Prince as Themysciran envoy in the contemporary world
WONDER WOMAN replies.
Replied to by Wonder Woman, with a rebuttal from Circe.
The letter
Ryker and I have been together four years. We were literally touring venues last month — looking at ballrooms, tasting little chicken skewers on toothpicks — when he mentioned, totally casually, that he'd booked a vasectomy consultation. Just to be safe, he said. And I just kind of went along with it, like he'd mentioned wanting to swap cars.
Here's the thing. I have a note on my phone full of baby names. Violet. Ezra. I've been adding to it since like year two, maybe earlier. I always told myself when he said "I don't want kids right now," the "right now" was doing a lot of work. That it meant eventually. When I finally said out loud that I want to be a mom someday — like actually said the words — he looked so genuinely relieved I'd brought it up before we booked anything. Relieved. Not happy we were figuring it out together. Just relieved. Like a near-miss.
I'm thirty-three. I love him more than anyone I've been with. And I honestly can't tell if the future I'm grieving is one he took from me, or one I invented entirely without ever asking him. Maybe I'll be a great aunt — I already have nieces (three of them, so at least I'd have practice). But I feel like I have to pick, and I don't know how to do it.
— Still Holding the Deposit Receipt in Columbus
Wonder Woman replies
You answered the wrong question for four years, and now you want to know if it's too late. Let me be plain with you.
He told you the truth — clumsily, in a ballroom lobby while sampling chicken skewers, but he told you. The relief on his face when you finally said the words out loud is not cruelty. It is a man who did not want to trap you, and he would not have deserved the name of partner if he had. I have stood against enemies who smiled through lies. Ryker is not that.
But you spent four years adding names to a list you never showed him. Violet. Ezra. You told yourself "not right now" was a door that would open, and you kept every nursery board to yourself because some part of you knew that asking the question out loud might end something you loved. I understand that fear. I do not honor it.
"Maybe I'll be the cool aunt" is not a life you are choosing. It is a life you are accepting with your eyes shut. My sisters on Themyscira taught me that a peace built on silence is not peace at all — it is surrender wearing a pleasant face.
You already know what is true. You have known it since you watched his shoulders drop with relief. The deposit is just money.
Do not ask yourself if you can learn to live without this. Ask yourself whether you would tell your daughter to.
— Wonder Woman
Circe weighs in
Oh, how touching — Diana has found a pig with manners and called it virtue. Darling, Ryker spent four years watching the clock on your fertility while he made his decision alone, in private, with a scheduling app. That is not honesty. It is a slow-motion cage with pleasant wallpaper.
Diana wants you to leave "whole." How very Amazonian. But why grieve this particular man as though he were irreplaceable? He is one creature among many — your desire for motherhood does not require his specific DNA, his blessing, or a single moment of your mourning. Grief over him is simply one more leash. Cut it. The sooner you stop treating his choice as a verdict on your future, the sooner you discover you never needed his permission at all.
— Circe
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