I Will Not Show Emotion

I have been with my husband for almost two decades, and I have been through the usual stages that in most cases are part of a long-term relationship: falling in love, sex and love, engagement and wedding, more love and sex, pregnancy, birth and puerperium. And I have experienced waves and hills, I have experienced great joys and great sorrows. Together we have experienced the best of the good and the worst of losses.

We have experienced a lot that has connected us, but still we have lost each other. It has happened gradually, it has happened almost in invisible ways, it has happened without me wanting it, and probably also without him wanting it.

I’m not sure when I last said ‘Love you’ to him, and when he last said those words to me. I think it is a long time since last that happened.

I am actually a little uncertain if I’ve said those words after the second birth, fifteen years ago. Unsure if I all this time with my husband have said those words as many times as the number of fingers I have on my hands. Unsure about if so it should be like this from now on, with me and my husband.

I have made up my mind. I will continue to meet Aslak, and I think that I am in my right to be with him. I cannot see why I should not feel free to say to him that I love him. I cannot see why I should not allow myself to say that I love him, and to hear these little words that fill me with such warm colors. And I think that I am in my right to this, to open me for something different, something stronger than what I’ve experienced in my former life.

I think that many relationships after a few years come to a point where you stop floating in the ‘intoxication’ of love, where you are inevitably forced to come back down to everyday life, where you have to face the everyday challenges again.

Everyone meets the demands of everyday life sooner or later, and it is important that this meeting takes place in a good way. Not too hard, and not like a bad stomach squirt or a too hard landing on frozen ground. Most people are so lucky to experience infatuation and love, and these are very important parts of being human.

Most people are more or less aware that living in that state rarely lasts forever. There was a poet who lived in this country who wrote this famous phrase: “It is possible to live in everyday life as well.”

The person who wrote this was not a young man. He was probably well into the years when he discovered this wisdom which says that it is important to see the good and the positive in the near things. Seeing the good and the positive is in itself both wise and useful, and gives you what I think can be a key to a good life. I think this is a bit inspired by the Stoics.

If I were to think about how it could be with me and Lars, if we were to try to find our way back to each other, then I think that these are exactly the things that would be important, that we were able to hear what the other has to say and that we show that we care, that we long.

But this is exactly where it fails. He’s here, and he’s not here.

He does not meet me. We are not equal.

I have been learning this lesson for many years; I will not give him much until he tries to take more from me. That’s why I have decided to do this: I will not show emotion, I will be a boring person. I will not talk to him about my feelings and I will not tell anything personal, something that means anything to me. I will keep hidden from him all the details, all the small, important things in my life. All that is important I will hide in my heart, for he cannot grasp it.

I know, I know he’s like that, because I’ve tried to share things like that with him. He grabs what I give him and twists it, and he makes something awkward out of it, something I do not recognize.

I once said that I felt a little uncomfortable sometimes when I walked on the street. I did not mean it so literally; I normally feel safe in the city here, but sometimes I feel the gaze of the others. He looked at me without saying anything.

“And then I think this, it’s something I’m not so comfortable with. — I wonder why I’m like that?” I said.

Lars looked at me again, in a slightly top-down way. At first, he said nothing, but then he went a little and thought, and then it came: “You feel better than others then? -Is that the way it is? Is that why you are like that — is that why you feel that way? You mean, like they are judging you, eh?

There are some such experiences with him that have made me retire. If I start talking about something personal, about myself and things that I find a little difficult, then he either seems uninterested and silent, or he listens to what I have to say and then it comes back to me, when I am little premonition of it. He can surprise me with such statements as “you are so and so, you are so sensitive, you should preferably not experience anything unexpected, because then panic takes you.”

I know it is unreasonable of me to write this, but he is like a predator lying and waiting for his prey to have a faint blink of an eye or be inattentive for a second. That’s when he sticks out, and hits me precisely on a sore point: “What was it I said! Yes, you said it yourself, you are a zero. You just mess up things.”

When he thinks I’m not on guard, he strikes and says things like “but you said it, you mean it, you feel it is like that, you have said.”

I have not said that, but I have learned to be silent.

He thinks he has the upper hand. But what he does not understand is that the way he approaches me is a blind alley. He does not understand anything so simple as that daring to show that one longs and loves someone is an important way to show love. It’s a bit like being kind and decent. The same goes for showing love and consideration, for example, doing things for people unsolicited, so you do not have to ask for it. In a relationship, it is important to do few things without always having to ask.