You’re trying to lead a normal life here, okay. Nobody’s supposed to know you get off thinking about your wife getting smashed by another man—and not just any man—her ex.

She almost discarded you. Many times, in fact. In all honesty, you don’t really even know why she keeps you around. You’re nothing special, not a bad guy but nothing anybody like her would ever fantasize about. Not like the way she fantasizes about her ex.

It’s not fair, really. Where do guys like him even come from? Years than you, he achieved everything you ever did in half the time, not that you stalk his Linkedin in the middle of the night or anything. If your wife didn’t want you to know about him, she wouldn’t have “accidentally” moaned his name the few times she actually permitted you to have sex with her. You say permitted because, as with most things, you only get a response from her if you’re on your knees, groveling. You’d be lying if you said the sting of her denying didn’t feel so, so good.

She must be the most cold-blooded person on the planet, right? To deny you point-blank all while texting her ex? Nobody with a heart could ever do something so cruel—and yet on the contrary you’ve never known someone with the capacity to have so much love for another person, but maybe it could only be for him. The things she says to him, the sweet nothings she utters every night before he closes his eyes just to dream about her. The song she hears for the first time and instantly thinks of him, becoming their song forever. The way she laughs so hard at the memes he sends (which are quite terrible, but you’d never be able to tell the way she spends hours giggling at her phone). The way you’d never seen her move so fast the second he suggests he sends a car for her—the Princess who could never be bothered to do anything for anybody was now a muse for him, and him only, rushing around in ways you’ve seen yourself doing at her every beck and call.

So, so cruel, in all the best ways. You’d be lying if you said you didn’t stick around for the fanfare. Sometimes, you’re not sure if you’re with her to be with her, or if it’s because you love hearing about her ex. How he fucks, how he tastes, how he does that one thing with his tongue. Even the mundane details, like the trace of his cologne permeated into her skin and hair; too expensive for you to even look at at the perfume counter, lest you forget you’ll never be like him, even in the most minute regards. It’s the way he walks, the way he talks, the airs he has which you could never recreate. You have nothing in common, apart from the woman whom you both are so, so far gone for.