▸ Column · Azeroth — the age of the Kirin Tor and Theramore, where hearthstones carry personal messages across kingdoms and an archmage answers letters between campaigns
JAINA PROUDMOORE replies.
Replied to by Jaina Proudmoore, with a rebuttal from Arthas Menethil.
The letter
My partner Chuck and his former love Marisol parted ways two years before we found each other, and he swears they are nothing more than friends now. But his hearthstone sparks with her messages from the moment he rises to the moment he sleeps — one day I counted forty-one. She wrote asking his opinion on furnishings, sending jokes, venting about her guild commander, and on a night when I was lying beside him, she sent a message that read "sleep well, dear heart." When I raised it with him, he told me I was being controlling and that Marisol has no one else. I don't want to be the jealous partner who searches his correspondence, but I feel as though I am sharing him with someone who never truly let him go. Am I wrong to want to matter more than the woman he left?
Jaina Proudmoore replies
You are not out of line, and I will not pretend otherwise — because someone has been telling you that you are, and the fact that it was him, in response to a reasonable request, is the part worth examining.
Forty-one messages is a number you started counting because something already felt wrong. That instinct is honest. But the forty-one messages are not, in the end, the issue. The issue is what happened when you named it to him plainly, which took courage: he didn't consider it. He called your concern controlling. He took something real you offered and returned it to you as a flaw in your character, and made Marisol's neediness your problem to carry. That is the part that matters. Not Marisol, who can write what she likes. Him.
I once loved someone who kept choosing something else, one reasonable-seeming step at a time. I read his intentions instead of his choices for far too long, and by the time the choices had accumulated into something undeniable, my grief outran my surprise. The surprise had already been spent long before the grief arrived.
Watch what he does when you bring him something real. Not what he says — what he does with the fact of your discomfort. If he keeps handing it back to you as a character flaw, you do not have a question about his ex. You have an answer about him.
I know that answer hurts. That doesn't make it less true, and you deserve to build on true things.
— Jaina Proudmoore
Arthas Menethil weighs in
She's telling you the problem is in front of you. I want you to look somewhere else for a moment.
You counted forty-one messages. That precision — look at it. Not the messages. The counting. I know what a person becomes when they begin tallying grievances with that much careful certainty. Each tally feels like clarity. Each one makes the next easier to justify, and harder to set down.
Someone who loved me tried to warn me, once. I called her concern controlling. I remember her face when I said it. Jaina always understood more than I gave her credit for.
You are being warned by someone who earned the right to say so. But I was Chuck before I was anything else. Watch which direction you are walking, not only which direction he is.
— Arthas Menethil
▸ Read next