The things I can't say

You are probably thinking I am avoiding you. I am. You called twice today. The first time I had gotten up from my pool chair to go to the bathroom and left the phone behind. The second time I was actually in the pool trying to drown my frustrations in two miles of repetitive motion. Both times I checked my phone after I got back. You didn't leave a message, so I decided to let you sweat a little.

I know you know I am upset. You're like that – really good at knowing and anticipating my emotional reaction. And I imagine you feel badly. But I don't know what to say to you. I don't know if I should swallow the lump that is rising in my heart and in my throat and threatening to destroy us. I don't know how to get past what seems more and more to be a permanent roadblock.

A "deal breaker", that's what they call it. Something you just can't live with – something you just can't get past. And I think I may have found one.

Just a week ago we were basking in the glow of the promise of new home – a place we would live together and make a life of our own. But they gave the house with the porch and the basketball hoop to the other couple –the one with the golden retriever locked in the back of their blue Eddie Bauer Subaru Outback. You said it was no big deal. Fair's fair. They could take the place sooner. They offered a longer lease. No big deal.

But it was a big deal. It was a sign that this road couldn't be so easy. That life was just not going to let us ride off into the sunset without a fight. But I am so tired of fighting. The thought of the struggle ahead made me cry. It made me cry all night until you came over and held me and made me feel better. Made me feel foolish and petty for resenting the happy couple and their dog. For resenting the twenty-something landlord and his glowing pregnant wife, who had the power to choose between us and them. Between easy and hard.

But now I think I am beginning to see it was all for the best. We can't have the house with the porch and the basketball hoop. We can't make a home and a family. We can't do anything because we are stuck. Stuck like waders in hip-deep mud. Stuck because of her. Maybe the would-be landlord and the swollen belly by his side could sense it.

Yesterday I thought I could come over and make you feel better. I thought I could cheer you up and we'd make love and everything would be alright. But you told me I couldn't make it better and I went to bed alone and frustrated. I dreamed all night about you. I dreamed that I was trying to give you something and you wouldn't take it. Or you would accept it and then accidentally leave it behind. And all throughout the dream I kept chasing after you trying to give you the thing you'd forgotten. As the dream wore on I became more and more upset by your carelessness and I began to think you didn't want it, but every time I would ask you if you wanted it you would say yes – enthusiastically. But I didn't believe you.

It doesn't take a genius to psychoanalyze that. I give and you say it's just what you want. But you leave me behind, over and over again. And when I ask you are you sure, you say definitely, without a doubt – but your choices tell me a different story.

Like the way you always diminish our relationship to your friends and family. You once became annoyed when a told you a friend of mine joked about the intelligence and height of our future children. "That's awfully presumptuous of her," you snapped. "I don't know what you tell your friends but I don't go around saying we are getting married and having children." I was speechless at the time-and heartbroken really. I had said nothing of the sort in fact – just that you made me happy and that I could see myself with you for a very long time. Your words wounded me deeply and caught me so off-guard I couldn't respond. The sting stayed with me for weeks to come.

You waylaid my fears, only to re-ignite them on a regular basis. When your parents asked you "what's the deal?" You said you didn't know. When your daughter asked if I was your girlfriend, you seemed to think she didn't need to know. And when one of your closest friends recently inquired about us, you say "we're thinking about moving in together." Thinking about it? We were ready to sign the lease on a house last week. I thought we were done thinking about it. Why can't you say to them what you say to me?

But I can let all those little slips go – chalk it up to nervousness about what your friends and family might think. Worries that they might say it's too soon, or it's too fast, or how well do you really know her? I have them to. But I tell them the truth. That I love you, and that you are the piece of my life that was missing. I have no need to wait.

Except that I do – need to wait that is. Because you can't seem to get her out of your life. She calls and calls and calls. You talk about money and selling the house and children's school tuition, and months go by and you're still no further than you were before. There is no resolution in sight. No end to this marriage and your financial and personal obligations that are greater than your means. No end to the uncertain future for us.

And therein lies the deal breaker. It is one of life's cruelest jokes that I should find a man I could love so deeply, trust so completely, whose heart resonates with my own, but is nevertheless bound to another woman and the family he made with her; dangled like a carrot in front of my face, just out of reach of my grasp.

I need to move forward. I need the promise of a man who is mine, who will give me children and a family that is ours. I cannot wait much longer. And so here I am. wondering if I should do what my heart tells me I should, even though it's bound to break it. I am wondering if I have the strength to say what I don't want to – that I cannot move in with you. That perhaps, even, I can no longer be with you. Not right now. Not until there is an end in sight.

This morning when I woke up I reached for you and held you while you were sleeping. I secretly wished you would wake up and kiss me. I wished that despite your exhaustion and lack of sleep that you would be overcome by desire. But instead you told me to get in the shower. She would be coming to bring the kids. And something inside me snapped. I couldn't take it. Not today. I couldn't see her. I couldn't see them. I couldn't dig deeper and give more, and play the step-mother. I couldn't face the woman and her children who robbed have me of yours and mine. Who will always come first and will leave nothing left over for us.

So I went to the pool, to beat my anger and sadness into the water and I couldn't answer the phone because I have nothing to say. Nothing I can say that won't break my heart further.