That afternoon, Adrian and I walked through the botanical gardens because some conversations were too large for the apartment.<\/p>\n
\u201cI owe you an apology,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve covered that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot fully.\u201d<\/p>\n
I admitted that when we married, I told myself secrecy meant privacy.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt first it did,\u201d Adrian said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes. Then I got comfortable having separate worlds.\u201d<\/p>\n
He nodded.<\/p>\n
\u201cI could be myself with you,\u201d I said. \u201cThen go home and become whatever version of me they expected.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat sounds exhausting.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then he told me something he had been holding back too.<\/p>\n
He had been offered a position in Seattle.<\/p>\n
Partnership track.<\/p>\n
More resources.<\/p>\n
A pro bono program he had wanted for years.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you want it?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe.\u201d<\/p>\n
That word scared me more than yes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWere you going to accept?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDecline?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen what?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was waiting to see if there was still room for us to make decisions together.\u201d<\/p>\n
The sentence hurt because it was fair.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never hid you because I was ashamed of you,\u201d I said. \u201cI was ashamed of myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adrian took my hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s stop making decisions based on people who aren\u2019t in our marriage.\u201d<\/p>\n
We agreed not to decide immediately.<\/p>\n
That itself felt like progress.<\/p>\n
That afternoon, Adrian and I walked through the botanical gardens because some conversations were too large for the apartment. \u201cI owe you an apology,\u201d I said. \u201cWe\u2019ve covered that.\u201d \u201cNot … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":916,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sharestory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=890"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":933,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890\/revisions\/933"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}