When I met Carter, I noticed how carefully he looked at me.
His eyes moved toward my hair.
Then they returned to my face.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
I wondered whether he was surprised by how uneven it looked in person.
I wondered whether he felt sorry for me.
I wondered whether he was thinking about the wedding.
I stopped myself before I could turn his expression into an answer.
I had come to hear what he had to say.
I could not do that if I spent the entire conversation guessing what he was thinking.
Carter sat down across from me.
He looked tired.
I probably did, too.
Neither of us had slept well, and the morning had become something neither of us had expected.
He looked at me again.
“I don't know what you want me to say, Rachel.”
I placed my hands on the table.
“I want you to tell me what you think.”
“I've told you. I think we're making this much bigger than it needs to be.”
I felt the familiar urge to defend myself.
Instead, I asked him to explain.
“Why do you think that?”
“Because we're supposed to get married today. Something happened to your hair, and you're upset. I understand that. But I don't understand why you're suddenly questioning everything we've planned.”
I listened until he finished.
Then I spoke.
“I'm questioning whether I can move forward when I feel that I can't tell you how upset I am without having to defend the fact that I'm upset.”
He looked down at the table.
“That's not what I'm trying to do.”
“Then help me understand what you are trying to do.”
He rubbed his forehead.
“I want us to get married. I want the day to go ahead. I want us to stop fighting about something we can't change.”
“I want to understand what happened, too. But I'm not fighting with you about my hair.”
“Then what are we fighting about?”
I took a breath.
“Whether my feelings matter when they make things difficult.”
He looked at me.
I could tell he had not expected that answer.
For a moment, I felt afraid that I had said too much.
Then I remembered that I had come here because I was tired of hiding what I meant.
“I know the wedding matters,” I continued. “I know we've spent months planning it. I know people are expecting us to go through with it. But I need you to understand that I can't use those things as a reason to ignore what I'm feeling.”
Carter leaned back.
“I never asked you to ignore your feelings.”
“You keep telling me about the schedule.”
“Because there is a schedule.”
“I know.”
“People have made plans. We've made promises.”
“I know that, too.”
My voice grew quieter.
“But I am the person who has to stand beside you and make those promises. I need to be sure I can make them honestly.”
He looked away.
I waited.
I did not want to rush into another explanation.
I wanted him to respond to what I had actually said.
Finally, he asked, “Do you think I don't love you?”
The question hurt because I knew how much I wanted to answer it.
I wanted to say that I knew he loved me.
I wanted to reassure him that I had never doubted it.
But that would not have been completely honest.
“I think I need to understand what love looks like between us when things are difficult,” I said.
He stared at me.
“That's a very complicated way of saying you don't trust me.”
“I didn't say I don't trust you.”
“You're questioning our entire relationship.”
“I'm asking whether we can have an honest conversation about it.”
He shook his head.
“I don't know how we're supposed to do that when you seem to have already decided something is wrong.”
I felt the words settle between us.
I had hoped that sitting together would make it easier to understand each other.
Instead, we were still struggling to speak about the same thing.
I wanted to talk about the way we handled fear, uncertainty, and disagreement.
He wanted to know whether I still intended to marry him.
Those questions were connected, but they were not identical.
“I haven't made a final decision about our future,” I said. “That's why I'm here.”
“Then what do you need from me?”
“I need you to listen without treating my uncertainty as something I'm doing to you.”
He was quiet.
I continued before I could lose my courage.
“I need to know that if I say something is hurting me, you will try to understand before telling me why I shouldn't feel that way.”
Carter looked down at his hands.
I wondered whether he understood.
I wondered whether I had explained it clearly enough.
Then I stopped myself.
I had explained it.
I could not make him understand by finding increasingly perfect words.
He had to be willing to hear them.
After a while, he said, “I didn't know you felt this way.”
I looked at him.
“I'm telling you now.”
He nodded, but he did not say anything else.
I wanted him to ask another question.
I wanted him to show curiosity about the part of me that was frightened and uncertain.
I wanted him to acknowledge that I had not come there to hurt him.
Instead, the silence returned.
I sat with it.
I did not rush to fill it.
I did not apologize for making the conversation uncomfortable.
Finally, Carter asked whether I was going to proceed with the wedding.
I looked at him for a long moment.
“I can't answer that honestly until I know whether we're having the conversation I came here to have.”
He closed his eyes briefly.
“Rachel, I don't know what else to say.”
I believed him.
At least, I believed that he did not know what to say at that moment.
That did not mean I had to pretend the conversation had given me what I needed.
I stood slowly.
“I think we need more time.”
He looked up.
“You're really going to postpone everything?”
“I haven't decided what happens to everything. I've decided I can't make this promise while I'm still trying to convince myself that my questions don't matter.”
He did not answer.
I wanted him to stop me.
I wanted him to say that he understood.
I wanted him to offer a reason to believe we could learn to speak to each other differently.
But I could not make those words come from him.
I gathered my bag.
The folded paper inside it pressed against my hand.
I had brought three questions with me.
I was leaving without all the answers.
Still, I understood something I had not understood before.
I could not build a marriage by doing all the listening, all the explaining, and all the reassuring myself.
Whatever happened between Carter and me, it would have to involve both of us.
I walked away without making a final judgment about his character.
I did not know everything he felt.
I did not know everything he feared.
But I knew I had asked for a conversation, and we had not yet found our way through it.
That was enough reason not to pretend the problem had disappeared.
Click here to continue reading: PART 19: I Let the Wedding Day Become an Ordinary Day Again
I Opened My Eyes on the Morning of My Wedding and Discovered That Someone Had Taken Away the One Thing My Fiancé Loved Most About Me
Part 18 of 20
