Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 41: The Offer

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 41: The Offer · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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neither held the space clean and unweighted she
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asked what should i do and i handed back her
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own test does the empire go quiet the way the
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gray green did or does it keep talking the good
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ones keep talking you'll know my playful wife
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episode 41 the offer written by mia We answered
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the email in the morning, the way we now answer
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everything, together at the kitchen table in
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the October light, and a week later we sat across
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a wide pale dusk from a man who wanted to make
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my wife into an empire. I will not give his name
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or his companies, they do not matter, and anyway
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he was less a person than a position, the human
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face of a great deal of money that had seen the
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December collection and decided it wanted some.
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He was courteous and clever and entirely sincere,
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which was the disarming thing. There was no trick
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in it, no catch I could find, only a large and
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genuine offer made by a man who believed, correctly,
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that he was handing my wife the thing every maker
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is supposed to spend a life praying for. He laid
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it out across the wide desk like a man unrolling
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a map of a country he was proposing to give her.
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A label. With her name on it. Real backing. The
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kind of money that turns a one -woman workroom
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into a house. That hires the hands and rents
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the space. And builds the supply lines. That
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takes a thing made 12 pieces at a time by one
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tired woman at a cutting table. And makes it
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10 ,000 pieces. In shops. In cities. On people
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Saloni would never meet. In countries she had
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never been. A flagship store. Her gray -green,
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her rose -dark, her whole secret vocabulary of
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cloth, carried out of the small workroom where
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four people see it and set down in front of the
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world. Reach. Scale. Legacy. Money enough that
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neither of them would ever again do the small
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frightened arithmetic of the freelance maker.
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The chance, he said, and he meant it generously,
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to stop being a well -kept secret and become.
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Finally, what her talent deserved, large. And
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I want to be fair to the offer, and to him, because
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the easy thing would be to paint it as a temptation
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in the old sense, a glittering wrongness, a serpent
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at a desk. It was not that. It was a good thing
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offered by a decent man, for sound reasons. Everything
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he said was true. Her talent did deserve a larger
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stage. The world would be richer for more people
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seeing her work. The money would buy real freedom.
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The recognition was earned and overdue. There
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was no lie anywhere in the offer. That, exactly,
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is what made it dangerous. The dangerous offers
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are never the false ones. The false ones are
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easy. The dangerous ones are the true but not
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yours. The genuinely good thing that is genuinely
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not for you. And they are dangerous precisely
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because there is nothing in them you can point
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at and call wrong. I watched her listen to it,
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from my place at the edge, the chair slightly
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back from the desk, and I want to record honestly
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what I saw, because the honest thing is more
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interesting than the flattering one. She wanted
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it. I had half expected, knowing her, knowing
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the small true scale she works at, that she would
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be immune to this, that the maker who takes down
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a good indigo because it is not true would wave
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away an empire without a flicker. She did not
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wave it away. She leaned in. Her eyes did the
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thing they do at the cutting table when something
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is going right. She asked sharp, real questions
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about volume and control and timelines, the questions
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of a woman seriously imagining herself inside
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the offer, trying it on, walking around in it.
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And why would she not? She is not above ambition.
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No real maker is. This was recognition at a scale
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she had worked 20 years and bled four collections
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toward. This was the validation, the reach, the
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proof that the thing she does alone in a small
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room matters enough for the world to want it
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by the 10 ,000. To pretend she felt no pull would
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be to make her smaller and falser than she is.
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She felt the pull. She felt it hard. I watched
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my wife sit across a wide desk and want. honestly
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and completely, to be made large, and I did not
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love her any less for it. I loved her more, for
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the honesty of the wanting, because a person
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who cannot admit the pull of the dazzling thing
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cannot really be trusted to refuse it either.
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There is a particular falseness I have learned
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to distrust, in myself most of all, the performance
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of being above wanting. The person who insists
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they feel no pull toward money, fame, scale,
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the larger life, is almost never enlightened.
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They're almost always either lying or asleep.
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Real freedom from a temptation is not the absence
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of the wanting. It is feeling the full force
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of the wanting, letting it be exactly as strong
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as it honestly is, and then choosing, clear -eyed,
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with the want still live in your hand, whatever
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you choose. Saloni wanted the empire. That was
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not weakness. That was the only honest ground
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from which a real refusal, if a refusal was coming,
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could ever be made. We did not decide anything
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in the room. You do not decide such things in
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the room. The room is built to make you decide
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in it. All that pale wood and certainty engineered
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to produce a yes on the spot. And we have learned,
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the two of us, to never sign anything in the
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room it was designed in. We said we would think.
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He said, of course, take your time, take a fortnight,
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and named a number as we left that was meant
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to do our thinking for us, and we walked out
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into the ordinary loud afternoon of the city,
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carrying an empire in an envelope. The number
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he named at the door stayed with me the whole
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way home, sitting in the auto with the city going
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past, because it was a number designed to end
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a conversation, a number meant to make the rest
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of the discussion academic. And I noticed in
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myself the pull of it, the way a large enough
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number reaches into you and begins, quietly,
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doing your reasoning for you, reframing every
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objection as a kind of foolishness. That is what
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real money does. It does not argue. It simply
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changes the air, makes the small true considerations
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feel suddenly precious and impractical, like
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insisting on hand -stitching in the age of the
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machine. I held on to the considerations anyway,
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but I felt the number working on me and I understood,
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holding that envelope, exactly why so few people
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who are handed one ever manage to say no. That
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night, at our own table, in our own light gone
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to dusk, we laid it on the wood between us and
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looked at it, and I understood that this was
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the indigo again. Only now the indigo was the
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size of a life. Because that was the exact shape
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of the thing, and Celonie saw it before I did.
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She has the eye for it, after all. It's good,
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she said, in precisely the flat tone she had
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used about the indigo three weeks before, the
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tone of a woman naming the trap she is standing
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in. That's the problem. It isn't good in the
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way a bad offer is bad and easy to refuse. It's
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good. It's a genuinely, completely good offer.
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Any sane person would take it. My mother would
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take it. Every maker I trained with would take
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it and be right to for themselves. She turned
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the envelope a little on the wood, not opening
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it. And I cannot tell yet if it's true. That
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was the whole of it, laid bare on the kitchen
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table. The good versus the true, raised from
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the scale of a color to the scale of the rest
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of her life. The offer was the indigo, competent,
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dazzling, defensible, the thing it would be insane
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to decline, the thing that would silence anyone
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who tried to tell her she had settled. And the
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only question that mattered was the one -nose
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spreadsheet on that wide desk could answer. Did
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it go quiet, or did it keep talking? Was the
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Empire the true note of her life, the thing she
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would hang the rest of her years from and feel,
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every day, the rightness of, or was it merely
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a magnificent indigo, a good so large and so
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loud that it could drown out, perhaps forever,
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the small true frequency she had spent her whole
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life learning to hear? The cruelty of it was
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that there was no way to run the experiment safely.
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With the color, a wrong choice cost her a collection,
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painful, but survivable, recoverable, one body
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of work among many. This choice did not come
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with a second take. If she scaled, and the scaling
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killed the true thing, she would not get the
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small workroom back. The hands would be hired,
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the lines built, the name franchised, and there
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is no returning a thing once it has hardened
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into an institution. And if she refused, and
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the offer never came again, she would carry for
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the rest of her life the unprovable ghost of
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the empire she might have been. Either road foreclosed
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the other. That was what made it the decision
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of a life, and not merely of a season. Its irreversibility,
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the way both of its yes were also permanently
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a no. I had to be very careful. Those next days,
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because there was an enormous temptation in me
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to push, and both directions were poisoned. There
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was a version of me, an older, more frightened
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version, who wanted to push her toward it. Toward
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the money, the security, the end of the small
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arithmetic, the relief of never again watching
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her do the freelance maker's anxious sums. Take
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it, that voice said, it's safety. It's the future.
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What kind of husband talks his wife out of an
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empire? And there was another version, no less
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poisoned, who wanted to push her away from it.
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To protect the small, true thing I loved, the
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hand -cut bias and the workroom where four people
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see the cloth. To keep my wife the size she was
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because I loved her at that size and was afraid
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of what an empire might do to a marriage. To
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the long, quiet middle. To the woman who puts
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her hand on the back of my neck. Keep it small,
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that voice said. Stay true. Don't let them scale
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you into something I can't reach across a kitchen
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table. I am not proud of that second voice, but
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I will not pretend I did not hear it because
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the whole project of these notebooks is to stop
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lying about what is actually in me. It was fear,
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plainly, wearing the robes of devotion. It told
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me it only wanted to protect the true thing,
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the small, real marriage. but underneath the
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noble costume it wanted something far less noble,
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to keep my wife at a size that could never outgrow
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me, never walk out onto a stage so large that
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I became, in the world's eyes if not in hers,
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merely the man who is married to her. The fear
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of being eclipsed is one of the ugliest things
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that lives in a loving man, and one of the most
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common. and it disguises itself as protectiveness
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so completely that most men never catch it in
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themselves at all. And I said neither. This was
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the hardest restraint of the whole long discipline,
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harder than the empty room, harder than the beginning,
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to want, badly, to put my thumb on the scale
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of my wife's largest decision for her safety
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or for my comfort, both dressed up as love, and
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to take my thumb off it instead. Because it was
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not my decision. It was hers. It was her work,
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her name, her one life, and the shape of it.
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And the most loving thing available to me was
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the thing it always turns out to be. Not to decide
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for her, not to steer her toward the choice that
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served my fear, but to hold the space wide and
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clean and unweighted so that she could find her
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own true answer in it. The answer that would
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still be hers and right when I was not in the
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room. So when she asked me on the third night,
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point blank, what do you think I should do? I
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did not tell her. I gave her. Instead, the only
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thing I had that was worth giving, which was
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the question itself, handed back. I think you
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already know how you'll know, I said. It's the
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same way you knew about the color. You don't
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need me to tell you whether to take it. You need
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to get quiet enough to hear whether it goes quiet.
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Does the empire go quiet, the way the gray -green
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went quiet in your hands? Or does it keep talking,
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keep selling itself, keep needing you to be impressed?
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You taught me that test. I'm just handing it
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back. The good ones keep talking. You'll know.
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She looked at me a long moment across the table,
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the envelope between us, the dusk coming down.
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That's a very annoying answer, she said. It's
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your answer. I just borrowed it. I will not tell
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you yet what she decided, because she had not
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decided. Not that night nor for several nights
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after, and I will not flatten the genuine difficulty
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of it into a tidy resolution it did not have.
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The truth is that for the better part of that
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fortnight my wife lived suspended between the
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good and the true and could not tell which was
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which and neither could I and we sat in the not
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knowing together because the not knowing was
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where we honestly were. But I can tell you the
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shape of how we held it because the holding was
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the marriage doing the thing the awake years
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had built it to do. We did not let the offer
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become a wedge. That was the danger I watched
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for. that a thing this size, this charged, would
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slide between us, that I would become the husband
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she had to manage or convince or resent, that
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the empire would do to us what success so often
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does to couples, which is to make of one person's
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largeness the other person's smallness, to turn
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a marriage into an audience. I refused the smallness.
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Her possible empire did not threaten me, and
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I made sure she could feel that it did not. Because
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the worst thing I could have done, worse than
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pushing either way, was to make her weigh my
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insecurity and the scale alongside everything
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else, to add to the hardest decision of her working
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life the secondary burden of managing how her
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husband felt about her getting big. So I kept
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myself deliberately easy, glad of the offer,
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unthreatened by her wanting it, a wide clean
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space for her to decide in, with no fear of mine
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cluttering it. It is, I have found, one of the
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great quiet gifts you can give the person you
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love, to be so secure in the middle of their
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largeness that they never have to make themselves
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smaller to keep you comfortable. I think this
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is one of the truest tests of whether you actually
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love a person or merely love what they do for
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you. A love that is really about your own needs
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cannot bear the beloved's growth, because every
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increase in them is felt as a threat. a drifting
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away, a raising of the bar you must somehow still
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clear. A love that is actually about them experiences
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their growth as nearly pure joy, uncomplicated
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by any private accounting of what it costs you,
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because there is no private accounting. Their
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largeness is not being measured against your
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smallness. You simply want them to be as big
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as they were made to be, and you would no more
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wish them smaller for your own comfort than you
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would wish a tree to stop growing because it
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had begun, at last, to shade your window. I wrote
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it in the fifth notebook, the envelope still
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unopened on the table in the next room, my wife
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asleep and undecided beside me. The Offer A man
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with a great deal of money wants to make Celony
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an empire, a label with her name, real backing,
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10 ,000 pieces, a flagship, reach, legacy, the
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end of a small arithmetic. And she wants it.
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She leaned in, asked the sharp questions, tried
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it on. Good. She's not above ambition, no real
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maker is, and a person who can't admit the pull
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of the dazzling thing can't be trusted to refuse
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it either. At our table, she named it herself,
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the indigo at the scale of a life. It's good.
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That's the problem. It isn't bad and easy to
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refuse. It's good. Any sane person would take
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it, and I can't tell yet if it's true. The good
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versus the true, raised from a color to the rest
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of her years. My job. Take my thumb off the scale.
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Both directions poisoned. Push her toward the
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money slash safety equals my fear. Push her toward
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staying small equals my comfort and my fear of
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what an empire does to a marriage. Neither. Held
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the space clean and unweighted. She asked, what
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should I do? And I handed back her own test.
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Does the empire go quiet the way the gray -green
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did? Or does it keep talking? The good ones keep
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talking. You'll know. She. That's a very annoying
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answer. And I kept myself easy. Unthreatened
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by her largeness. So she'd never have to shrink
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to keep me comfortable. Her empire is not a wedge.
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I won't let it be. And below it, the working
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line. When the one you love is offered a largeness.
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The test is not theirs alone. It is yours too,
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and yours is quieter and easier to fail. Theirs
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is to tell the good from the true. Yours is to
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take your thumb off the scale, to want nothing
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for them but their own true answer, and above
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all to be so unthreatened by their getting big
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that they never have to make themselves small
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to keep you. The cheapest thing a frightened
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love does is shrink the beloved to a size it
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can hold. The work is to grow a love large enough
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to hold them at any size they turn out to be,
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even the size of an empire, even a size that
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can no longer be reached across a kitchen table.
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Hold the space. Keep yourself easy. Hand back
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the test. And let her find, in her own time and
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her own hands, whether the dazzling thing goes
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quiet or keeps talking. To be continued in episode
20:03
was episode 40, One of My Playful Wife. If this
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story is staying with you, the next episode is
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already waiting. Subscribe so you don't miss
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it. The complete book is on Amazon, and early
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episodes plus bonus chapters are on my Patreon.
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Links are in the description. i'm mia thank you
20:24
for listening