I hated it, but it worked. You can’t argue with the results.
Not getting enough made me want more. Being with Pearce was the emotional equivalent of being ravenously hungry and then eating one Pringle.
I knew the pattern. I knew the only way to stay interested was to stay unsatisfied.
But I still wanted to get… satisfied.
But he wouldn’t satisfy me. Or couldn’t.
It was the worst relationship of my life. And the longest.
I stayed in a state of suspended dissatisfaction for three long years until finally, one day not long before we graduated, as I was bemoaning my fate to my mom on a video call—she just… solved it.
“I’m terrified that if he ever really gives me what I want, I’ll lose interest,” I said.
My mother looked at me over her readers. “Well,” she said. “You know what the answer to that is.”
There was an answer to that? “What?”
“Get married,” she said. LikeSimple.
I frowned. “Get married?”
My mom nodded, likeObviously. “Put yourself in a position where youcan’tlose interest.”
“I don’t think Pearce wants to get married.”
“Never underestimate the value of a good threat,” my mom said.
“But what if he says no?”
“Then you’re no worse off than you are right now.”
It was sneaky, and it was brilliant. And it worked.
One night, over dinner, I said, in the most pleasant, disinterested, robotic way possible, “Pearce, I’d like to get married. And if that’s not of interest to you, we should probably break up so I can find someone else.”
Pearce frowned a little, turned the idea over in his mind. And then he said, “Great idea. Let’s get married.”
And that was that. A week later, I had Grandmother Richmond’s two-carat engagement ring on my finger.
It felt like a triumph—until we stayed that way for four years.
Engaged—but not married—for four years.
We graduated college. He went into quantitative finance, and I decided, after much soul-searching, that I wanted to become a middle school math teacher and illustrate math concepts with fun activities like origami. He decided to use his math major to make money, and I decided to use my math major to make art.
A choice that Pearce did not understand, personally or financially.
We still didn’t live together. He still answered only 50 percent of my texts.
He stalled and stalled, until one night his parents sat him down and told him they would like some grandchildren.
And now here I was, walking the plank.
I meanaisle.
Once we set a date, I was happy at first. But the truth was, as the wedding plans became more solid, I started to feel less happy. Things that hadn’t bothered me before, like how he smacked when he ate pasta, and how his earlobes were too small, and how he checked his phone every three minutes, started to loom larger.
