▸ Column · Present-day Tokyo, a grounded modern marriage — the answerer's contemporary schoolgirl-turned-champion world
SAILOR MOON replies.
Replied to by Sailor Moon, with a rebuttal from Queen Beryl.
The letter
My husband and I have been together eleven years — present-day Tokyo, two kids, the younger just started elementary school, the mortgage and the bulk-store membership very much intact. Somewhere after his promotion we went from a couple who couldn't keep apart to two polite roommates. I'd love to be close a few times a week; he seems perfectly fine with once a month, and only if I'm the one reaching out, which is always me. When I finally raised it, he told me — kindly — that he's "just not a high-drive person" and had assumed I'd adjust. Which felt like being told I'd agreed to terms I never got to read. I don't want to treat him like a vending machine, but the rejection is hollowing me out. Can a gap this wide be bridged, or are we simply incompatible in a way that never improves?
Sailor Moon replies
Okay, first — that "hollowing me out"? That's real, and I need you to stop apologizing for feeling it. Wanting to be close to the person you love isn't being a vending-machine-pusher. It's the opposite!
And here's the thing nobody's saying: you are the one who keeps reaching out, every single time, knowing you might get a no. Do you know how much guts that takes? I'm a crybaby — I cried before every fight, every single time — and I still stood up shaking and did it. That's what you've been doing. That's brave, not pathetic.
But please, please don't jump to "fundamentally incompatible" and quit on him. "Not a high-drive person" is what he said — it's not all of what's true. You didn't lose the touching first. You lost the closeness, and the touching went with it. Reach for the actual him under the roommate. Tell him plainly: "I'm lonely, and I'm not leaving — I want us back." Give the real him one honest chance to reach back. Caring isn't being a punching bag, you know? But don't write off eleven years before you've let his heart answer.
— Sailor Moon
Queen Beryl weighs in
How tender. She would have you "reach," again, for the man who has reached for you precisely never. Mark his words, child, for the bright one skipped past them: he assumed you would adjust. That is the whole crime in a sentence — he did not propose to meet you, he expected you to shrink to the size of his small flame, and call your shrinking peace. I know that demand intimately. I dimmed an entire world to match a heart that went cold, and — hear the queen falter — the heart never once warmed for the dimming. So do not swallow yourself into a throne of quiet wanting. Name your want as a thing you will not apologize for. Then watch whether he crosses to you, or only waits for you to vanish.
— Queen Beryl
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