“After we sold our first home, we were looking for new houses. I had a couple that I really liked, but she was stuck on this one house and kept coming back to it. I hated that house. It was hideous inside, untouched since 1978 (ugh, that wallpaper!), not in the town I wanted to live in and nothing about it tempted me. When we walked in the front door for a showing, I watched her face light up like I hadn’t seen in years. She walked around wide-eyed from room to room, and in the face of all the horrible decor and issues with disrepair she told me it felt like her ‘forever home.’ I put aside my own wants and we made an offer the same day.
Now, I had always been a subscriber to the ‘happy wife, happy life’ mantra, but this was different. In some sad and serene part of me, I knew I wasn’t going to be in that house forever ― but I wanted her to have it. For her. It was at that moment that I knew that I still loved her but that it was done. I spent the next year remodeling that house on nights and weekends, and roughly about when it was done we split. She still has the house, and I’m happy for that.” ― Billy
5. When I refused to deal with my own underlying anxieties about commitment.
