_Bee

Story Cave | Fiction & Nonfiction
Secrets. Choices. People. Stories. Let's take a walk.

[_Bee @Evolving_Bee5]

@Felikayo Thank you, you too

[_Bee @Evolving_Bee5]

@Felikayo I definitely won't give her access again

[_Bee @Evolving_Bee5]

@Felikayo Definitely no, apologies in the presence of the people you embarrassed me

[Auriel @Auriel_zy]

I remember I took this girl’s man because I loved the way he treated her. He bought her a house and a car, wine and dined her, raised all three of her kids and didn’t even have any of his own. She didn’t have to work and he was very successful. I used to follow everything they posted wishing it was me. So I said let me shoot my shot, the worst he can say is no. I hopped in his DMs and surprisingly he gave me some play. After about three months of talking, I thought I had hit the jackpot and secured a good man who was going to take care of me. Whole time when I finally got him,

[_Bee @Evolving_Bee5]

@Auriel_zy This is when one should say "The grass is greener ont here other side" I admire people's relationships online and thats the end of it because we definitely don't know whats actually going on with them.

[Michael @Pitchside_CF]

My son collapsed at his cousin's house last Saturday around 6:40 p.m.

He's in third grade and has a severe tree-nut allergy.

They had served brownies after dinner.

He took one bite, said his throat felt tight, and sat down hard on the floor.

His aunt called 911 immediately.

My husband and I were still on the train home from work.

When the paramedics arrived, his aunt handed them his iPhone.

They pressed Emergency on the Lock Screen, then Medical ID.

The first thing they saw was:

[_Bee @Evolving_Bee5]

@Pitchside_CF Thank you for this, parents and anyone living with someone with allergy or special need definitely needs this settings.

[_Bee @Evolving_Bee5]

I didn't. Not yet. But I thought about it all night, and not with guilt, which is the part that frightens me most.

I keep trying to picture my husband's face if he understood. Some days I think he would forgive me. He was always gentler than I deserved. Other days I think about the vows I made, standing in a rented hall in a dress I couldn't really afford, promising "in sickness and in health." I did not say "in sickness, until it gets lonely."

My sister knows. She says I'm a saint for all I do for him and that I deserve some happiness. My daughter does not know, and I think she would never speak to me again. My pastor would tell me to pray, and I have. I have prayed until my knees ached, and the longing didn't leave. It just sat there beside me, patient.

Here is what I tell myself at night: that I am not leaving him. That I will still iron the shirts. That I will still bring the butterscotch and hold his hand and answer to "nice lady." That nothing I do in a stranger's arms takes a single hour away from the man who needs me.

And here is what I am afraid of: that this is exactly what a woman says when she has already made her choice and is only looking for permission.

Because the truth is, I'm not sure my husband would be the one I'm betraying. Maybe it's the woman I was at the altar. Maybe it's the version of me who believed that loyalty meant never wanting anything for myself. Or maybe I'm just a wife who spent fifteen years being quiet and has finally found her voice, and it is saying something unforgivable.

On Sunday I ironed a blue shirt. At the care home, my husband touched the collar and said, "Nice." For one second he looked right at me, and I saw him, really saw him, the man I married. Then it passed, like a cloud over water.

I held his hand and said nothing. Then I drove home, and my phone buzzed with a message from the man from church…….

[_Bee @Evolving_Bee5]

My husband has dementia and now lives in a personal care home. I still love him, but is seeking companionship with another man a betrayal of our marriage?

Don't judge me, here's my story.

Every Sunday I iron a shirt for my husband, even though he no longer knows which day it is. The aides at the care home tell me he doesn't need it. I do it anyway. He used to be particular about his collars.

I visit four times a week. I bring his favorite butterscotch candies and sit beside him while he looks at the window. Sometimes he calls me by my name. Sometimes he calls me "the nice lady." On those days I smile and hold his hand, and I go home and cry in the car.

I want to be clear about something before anyone judges me: I love him. I loved him when we married, and I love him now, in a way that has outlasted memory, his and mine.

But I have to be honest about the rest…..

[_Bee @Evolving_Bee5]

In fifteen years of marriage, the physical side of us never worked. I won't pretend otherwise. He was kind, he was steady, he never raised his voice. But in bed, he was careful, quick, and quiet, like a man filling out a form. I tried talking about it once, early on. He went silent for two days, and I never brought it up again. So I learned to want less. I told myself that a good husband was worth more than a good night, and most days I believed it.

Then the diagnosis came, and the long goodbye began.

People talk about the grief of losing someone slowly, but they don't talk about what happens to the body while the heart is busy mourning. Mine did not go quiet. If anything, it got louder. I would lie in our bed, in the empty half of the house, and feel something I thought I had buried years ago. I felt hungry. Not for love, because I had that. I wanted to be touched. I wanted to be wanted.

I told no one at first. Then one evening, a man at my church's bereavement group asked if I wanted to get coffee. His wife had died two years earlier. He was warm and funny, and he looked at me the way a man looks at a woman, not the way a nurse looks at a caregiver. I said yes before I could think.

Coffee became dinner. Dinner became a long drive with the windows down. And last week, sitting in his car outside my house, I realized I did not want to go inside. I wanted him to ask me to stay……

[_Bee @Evolving_Bee5]

I haven't answered yet.

So I'll ask you what I cannot ask anyone I know. Is companionship outside the marriage a betrayal if you're still loving and caring for your spouse?

[_Bee @Evolving_Bee5]

I didn't. Not yet. But I thought about it all night, and not with guilt, which is the part that frightens me most.

I keep trying to picture my husband's face if he understood. Some days I think he would forgive me. He was always gentler than I deserved. Other days I think about the vows I made, standing in a rented hall in a dress I couldn't really afford, promising "in sickness and in health." I did not say "in sickness, until it gets lonely."

My sister knows. She says I'm a saint for all I do for him and that I deserve some happiness. My daughter does not know, and I think she would never speak to me again. My pastor would tell me to pray, and I have. I have prayed until my knees ached, and the longing didn't leave. It just sat there beside me, patient.

Here is what I tell myself at night: that I am not leaving him. That I will still iron the shirts. That I will still bring the butterscotch and hold his hand and answer to "nice lady." That nothing I do in a stranger's arms takes a single hour away from the man who needs me.

And here is what I am afraid of: that this is exactly what a woman says when she has already made her choice and is only looking for permission.

Because the truth is, I'm not sure my husband would be the one I'm betraying. Maybe it's the woman I was at the altar. Maybe it's the version of me who believed that loyalty meant never wanting anything for myself. Or maybe I'm just a wife who spent fifteen years being quiet and has finally found her voice, and it is saying something unforgivable.

On Sunday I ironed a blue shirt. At the care home, my husband touched the collar and said, "Nice." For one second he looked right at me, and I saw him, really saw him, the man I married. Then it passed, like a cloud over water.

I held his hand and said nothing. Then I drove home, and my phone buzzed with a message from the man from church…….

[_Bee @Evolving_Bee5]

My husband has dementia and now lives in a personal care home. I still love him, but is seeking companionship with another man a betrayal of our marriage?

Don't judge me, here's my story.

Every Sunday I iron a shirt for my husband, even though he no longer knows which day it is. The aides at the care home tell me he doesn't need it. I do it anyway. He used to be particular about his collars.

I visit four times a week. I bring his favorite butterscotch candies and sit beside him while he looks at the window. Sometimes he calls me by my name. Sometimes he calls me "the nice lady." On those days I smile and hold his hand, and I go home and cry in the car.

I want to be clear about something before anyone judges me: I love him. I loved him when we married, and I love him now, in a way that has outlasted memory, his and mine.

But I have to be honest about the rest…..

[_Bee @Evolving_Bee5]

@Pitchside_CF I think since she rejected him she shouldn't have been concerned or mad that her friend is going out withh the guy she rejected

[_Bee @Evolving_Bee5]

His hands were shaking.

He looked at her.

She looked at him.

Neither of them spoke.

Finally, he said:

"I didn't leave those notes to hurt you."

She waited.

"I just couldn't watch you keep calling him, knowing what I knew."

She didn't yell.

She didn't cry.

She sat there for a long time.

Then she picked up her bag and said, "Thank you for telling me the truth."

At 12:40 the next day, her phone stayed in her drawer.

She walked to the break room.

The chair at our lunch table, the one that had always sat empty while she stood by the window, finally had her in it.

[_Bee @Evolving_Bee5]

Priya laughed at every office dinner, and that should have been my first clue.

Every day at 12:40, Priya called her husband.

She stepped away from her desk, turned toward the window, and said the same thing.

"Did you eat?"

Eleven years of marriage. Same time, same question.

Then one Tuesday, 12:40 came.

Her phone stayed on the desk.

12:55.

Still nothing.

By 1:30, she was staring at it like it might explain itself.

At 2:00, she said quietly, "He didn't pick up this morning either."

She had called him nine times since breakfast……

[_Bee @Evolving_Bee5]

The next day: Ask him about the office dinner.

Then: You are not the one who is broken.

For weeks, it continued.

She thought it was a prank.

Then she thought it was a warning.

Then she stopped sleeping.

One evening, she finally asked her husband about Thursdays.

He went quiet.

Then he told her everything.

He was gay.

He had known since before they met, and he had been too afraid to say it, so he built a life around not saying it.

At the dinner last year, he had met people from her office.

Some of them became more than acquaintances.

She listened without moving.

He kept saying he was sorry.

She kept thinking about the phone calls.

Eleven years of "Did you eat?" to a man who had been somewhere else.

The next morning, there was no note on her keyboard.

Instead, Karim was standing at her desk…..

[Adut @Adut25_1]

I was the new receptionist at a company where everyone seemed to know everyone’s business.

Within my first week, people started warning me about one particular employee.

“Be careful with him,” one of my coworkers whispered. “He likes new women.”

I laughed it off because the guy barely spoke to me.

Then I noticed something strange.

Every morning, he would leave a coffee on my desk.

No note. No explanation.

People immediately started making jokes.

“He has a crush on you.”

“You’re going to be his next office girlfriend.”

I kept telling them he was just being nice.

[_Bee @Evolving_Bee5]

Someone else is giving me what my husband no longer does.

When someone else is meeting my needs, is it time to leave, or cut them off and work on my marriage?