I've apologized for everything. I want you to tell me the truth for once, the actual complete truth. I leaned forward. Did you ever want children with me? The silence stretched between us like a chasm.
I don't know, she finally whispered. I thought I did. When we got married, when we were young and everything felt possible. Yes, I wanted kids. I wanted the whole thing to house, family, white picket fence.
But somewhere along the way, I changed. I realized I liked our life the way it was. Liked having freedom and flexibility and not being tied down. And I didn't know how to tell you that without without me leaving you. " She nodded miserably. "So, you lied.
You strung me along for years. Let me believe we were building towards something that you had no intention of actually doing. And when that lie got too complicated, when I started pushing for fertility treatments, you started an affair. " Because it's easier to blow everything up than to have a difficult conversation. It wasn't calculated like that. It wasn't a plan.
Of course, it was a plan. Maybe not consciously. Maybe not sitting down with a checklist, but your actions reveal intent, Rachel. You kept taking birth control while claiming to want a baby. That's deception.
You pursued Marcus while acting like a devoted wife. That's betrayal. You booked a vacation with your lover using money we saved for our child's future. That's theft. Every single choice you made was designed to serve your desires while hiding them from me.
I pulled another document from the envelope, one I'd been saving for this exact moment. This is a text message exchange between you and your sister from last April. You told her you weren't sure you wanted kids anymore. She asked if you'd talk to me about it. You said no, that you'd deal with it later.
And when she suggested you should be honest with me, you said, "I read directly from the screenshot, you said James would freak out. He's wanted kids since before we got married. It's easier to just keep pretending and figure it out eventually. " Rachel stared at the message like she was seeing a ghost. You hacked my phone. I recovered deleted messages from our shared cloud backup, which you would know if you'd bothered to read the privacy settings.
But that's not the point. The point is that you knew. You knew for at least 6 months, probably longer, that you didn't want what I wanted. And instead of being honest, instead of giving me the chance to decide if I wanted to stay in a marriage that would never include children, you just kept lying. Because I love you, she was shouting now, desperate, because I didn't want to lose you.
And I knew if I told you the truth, you'd leave. So, I just I kept hoping I'd change my mind. That maybe I would wake up one day and want a baby as much as you did. But you didn't change your mind. You started sleeping with someone else instead.