I sat with all of this for five minutes. Then I went to make coffee.
The Marriage, After
Daniel and I had a conversation in December that had nothing to do with Patricia and that was the best evidence I had that something had changed.
It was about money. Specifically, about a shift in our contributions to the household budget that had happened gradually over the two years since I had changed jobs and taken a role with a higher salary. I had been contributing more to the mortgage and utilities without it ever being formally discussed, because it had happened organically and I had not raised it, in the way of someone who does not raise things.
I raised it.
I said: I’ve been paying about sixty percent of our household costs for the last two years and we’ve never talked about whether that’s the arrangement we want or just the one that happened.
He said: I didn’t realize it was sixty percent.
I said: I know. That’s why I’m saying it now.
We talked about it for an hour. We looked at the numbers together. We landed on an arrangement that was slightly different from what had been happening, and both of us agreed to it explicitly, and it was written in a shared document that we both have access to.
This is what changed: not the amount, exactly, but the fact that it was a decision rather than a drift. That we were looking at the same information and making the same choice and both knew we had made it.