I wonder if he even liked me. It was pretty clear that towards the end he didn’t like spending time with me. Whenever I asked if he wanted to join me for [whatever] the answer was almost invariably “no”.

We used to have fun together, ages ago. I naïvely lived in the dream that we could still have that if we made a bit of an effort.

I remember our 12th (?) wedding anniversary. I’m not sure about the exact year, but Adrian could speak clearly enough that he could be understood by others than us, and could thus be left with others. I had arranged for my mum to babysit, so we could have a date night. Eric came home after work and I told him that we could go out, just the two of us, thinking that it would be a positive surprise. He said something like “unless you have an actual plan, I’d rather not”.

I covered up my hurt. “Of course I have a plan,” I told him, because I did. I had a restaurant booking and everything. Looking back after the fact, I couldn’t help thinking that his response showed how much he valued spending time with me. I didn’t make any more attempts at an obvious date night after that.

It was always me buying flowers for our anniversaries. It was always me finding things for us to do together. Ballet evenings were the exception, he made those happen. But for him the ballet was the important part and I was also there, rather than the opposite. When we did go out for a concert or something, he switched to reading his work email as soon as we got on the train home. I was just… also there, in the background.

When the kids were old enough to be safely left to their own devices for longer stretches of time, I suggested a few times that we could set aside a regular time for just us. Something low-key, like a Sunday afternoon fika, to just talk. He wasn’t interested at all.

When we were discussing divorce, he claimed that we never focused on our relationship and the kids were always the focus. Well, speak for yourself.