When I was married, I figured out the perfect plan to make the relationship work: if my husband and I both had strong feelings about a topic, we would compromise. But if one person didn’t care and the other had an opinion, then that person would get what they wanted. It wasn’t complicated or clever, it was just logical. In theory, it created a nice balance. In practice, it created a stable imbalance because He always knew what he wanted and I never did, so He ended up making all of the big decisions in our relationship.

Usually that involved some form of travel: He picked the destination when we studied abroad in Australia, He chose when we went to South Africa, He planned our honeymoon to Switzerland, and He made the call when we lived in France and learned French (I preferred Spanish). I kept getting taken to amazing places so I felt that the system must be working, but there were more than a few times when I had the nagging feeling that something was off. I was living someone else’s dream, and even though it was lovely in many ways, that didn’t make it mine.

I don’t remember feeling much. I do remember taking pride in presenting myself as a very easy-going person. I made few demands because I didn’t know what I wanted and also because I was afraid of the responsibility that came with getting my way over someone else. The suppression manifested in various forms of insatiability including binge eating and a wandering eye. With these tools at my side, I managed to maintain my perpetual agreeability.

I was willing to defer on the question of travel, but I mustered up an opinion of my own when it came to choosing where to live. He wanted to live in New York. I did not. Aha! We both had strong opinions so this was the time for compromise, right? We could move somewhere closer to home or someplace more appealing to me like Chicago or Philadelphia or Toronto or Detroit, but He convinced me that compromise meant trying out New York for a short time. He accepted a summer internship with a law firm and I agreed (of course) under the rationale that I would have veto power regarding a long-term move if I didn’t like it at the end of the 2-month stay.

Of course, we ended up moving to New York long term.

The often-repeated story I used to tell is that I was reluctant at first, but then realized how great New York was and fell in love. The true version of the story is that I found out before the summer ended that my decision had been made for me. A law student’s first summer job is necessarily his second summer’s job, which is necessarily his career job unless it or he really sucks. For another thing, the economy had tanked and losing any kind of seniority by switching firms was a huge risk. Finally, He couldn’t even apply for another job during the regimented interview period because we made plans to work in South Africa during that time. The schedule had been laid out far in advance and he knew it, so I merely cast a ceremonial ballot in the affirmative of the inevitable. No need to cause a fuss. But all these are just particulars of circumstance, the truth is, that what He wanted always seemed like the “right answer” and I didn’t have the nerve to say no to it. New York was a done deal because it was what he wanted.

Even so, the  New York I agreed to was Brooklyn. Brooklyn is manageable, Brooklyn has a soul, Brooklyn is relatable­– its buildings and its people are closer to the ground than in the city center. So when we started looking online for apartments, I was completely confused to see that He was scrolling through a totally different section of the map. Manhattan? Midtown? It went against everything we planned. He didn’t bother trying to convince me, he just started looking, knowing the pieces would fall into place.

He wanted to live in Manhattan. I did not. We both had strong feelings. Maybe it was time for compromise. Maybe the compromise would be that I would get exactly what I wanted because it was finally my turn. But relationships have a certain sort of muscle memory that tends to favor one side. And wasn’t it true that I didn’t have a job in the city yet? And wouldn’t it make sense to be centrally located? And isn’t it wrong to say I don’t want to live someplace I’ve never lived in before without giving it a chance? And wasn’t it true that I didn’t really have time to look for apartments anyway since I was in the midst of treatment at an eating disorder facility right before we moved? Good point, honey, we’ll do it your way.

I moved to New York one week after he did, newly “sober” from rehab and tender in a new environment. Our apartment was in a gleaming 40-story building literally in the shadow of the Empire State Building. We paid over $3,000/month for under 500 square feet. It was beautiful and strange. I was afraid to leave the building Friday through Sunday because of the hoards of tourists that swarmed the area.

One day we explored our new neighborhood and discovered a grocery store. I remember walking home and complaining about how far we had to carry the food. He wasn’t sympathetic: “I guess I’m just an optimist, I always try to see the positive in things.” I was livid. “Fuck that! You’re not an optimist, you just get everything you want! You have your cake and eat it too! Everything seems good when you get all the frosting!”

That’s what I wish I said later, but I didn’t say another word.

New York is a great place for people with disposable income who know what they want. He was acting on his very clear sense of what he wanted by making a habit of drinking to oblivion and spending a lot of time with a woman who could keep up. I dreamed he would fall in love with her and leave me without the liability of making such an extreme decision. I had long since relapsed into bulimia and was satisfying my addiction by losing myself in the food multiple times a day. And that’s how it was.

We were young and attractive and successful and well-traveled and well-liked and “what a view!” We did not fight. We did not express anger. We skipped a whole spectrum of inconvenient emotions. Our lives were dreamlike in the way that dreams lack detail and dimension and can be escaped from when they become intense. It was supposedly wonderful.

New York was just a detour, we both agreed on moving back to Michigan eventually but that was where the agreement ended. I wanted to live in Detroit. He wanted to live in Ann Arbor. Ann Arbor is lovely, I know that because we both lived there for 6 years. Ann Arbor is easy and safe and known and perfectly likable but it wasn’t where I wanted to live yet it was the only place He would consider and even then, large parts of the city were off limits to him. I felt a sense of dread every time he pulled up the Zillow page and zoomed into the map until he had sufficiently narrowed down the acceptable parameters of our future life. I do not recall us ever searching in Detroit.

Every year, when the lease on our tiny expensive Manhattan apartment was due to expire, I searched for apartments. I wanted a home among the millions of cubicles for rent in that massive city. I knew that I didn’t want the vacant sterility of living in what felt like a hotel room but I didn’t know where to find it. Every year, the known won out against the unknown. Every year, His certainty won out against my pathetic ache to find that nebulous something else.

In our tiny apartment, we lived lives of compact denial. Then one day I had the courage to tell him I was “having doubts” about our relationship. At that point, I still didn’t know what I wanted but I did know that some things had to change. I was surprised, but should not have been, that there was no place for change or compromise on his end. He wouldn’t go to therapy, He refused to even stop seeing his girlfriend, He wouldn’t even give me time to think about it. He had everything he wanted and my problems were my problems. I thought that all I needed was a month to clear my head and set things right.

I found a cute sublet in Brooklyn.

When I left, He filed for divorce.

I, the obliging wife, signed the papers too.

Three years have gone by and as far as I can tell, He is living just about the same life he was grooving on when I left.

For my part, life now is unrecognizable from what it was then. The freedom of this new course can seem overwhelmingly multi-dimensional and I often feel I really don’t know what I want. I still struggle with a lot of the old issues and I have new worries that never used to bother me for– like how will I make enough money to support myself? Will I ever have kids? What if I never find someone to be certain about? Even so, each year has been new and exciting and different in ways that exceed the one before it. I’m finally learning what I want so I can build toward it. I don’t always get what I want, but at least I can appreciate it when I do. My life isn’t a dream anymore, but at least I’m not asleep.