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Year and a Day

I have to do today that which is going to allow me to live with myself tomorrow. Right now, that means supporting Emily, even when she breaks off our engagement.

Friday, just after Emily came home from seeing her therapist, she said we needed to talk. I immediately closed the lid of my computer to signal that she had my undivided attention. She said that she didn't want to get married, possibly ever. She had been thinking about this for months, she said, though I am not certain how profoundly. She claimed she had been throwing herself into wedding planning as a means to quench this fear, but it only grew more insistent. I told her that I could handle this, as long as it meant that we were still together. A ceremony has never defined my relationship to her, she is my wife by degrees, simply because she is and has come to be. I wish she had clued me into these feelings sooner - I could have done without dropping so much money on my titanium and diamond wedding band and coming to think of it as an impervious representation of our love - but she said she simply didn't have the words until she finally did.

Her therapist, mother, and sister were all referenced as people who told her not to go through with the wedding, which hurts but she isn't ready to be married since it has now become so frightening and oppressive to her. She, who urged us to get a puppy or a baby in the near future, isn't ready for the commitment marriage requires, the lifetime in each other's arms. I made her promise that this was not simple her way of gradually breaking up with me, first our engagement then our relationship entirely. She swore that she wasn't doing this, that she wanted to be with me, just not get married. I would rather have her by my side than have a ring on her finger and for the law to understand that she is my family, so I consented given that I didn't imagine I had any other options.

That night, she fell asleep shirtless on my chest, having done little else to justify her semi-nudity.

We spent Saturday together, she treating me to lunch and I treating her to a movie. We did some futile Christmas shopping, but then things began to get awkward, as I passed the jewelry store where I'd bought my ring and began considering whether it could be returned, then realizing that I didn't want to return the ring because that would be a final step to admitting that this wedding wouldn't happen. Somehow, the casualness with which she said she would sell her ring and having

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