Adultery The Old Toothbrush by Trambak

[Ramesh_Rocky]

Soon, this discovery was over. The model family disease caught us. We started appreciating each other's viewpoints and accepted each other the way we were. We no longer fought and became an ideal couple! We lost our entities.

Maturity snatched away from us our romance. We started caring but we stopped wooing. I started worrying more about how you look than to what I should be doing so that you keep looking at me. You too did the same. Slowly we took each other for granted. I would wear some shapeless nightie at home and you would just wear a Bermuda and nothing on top exposing your pot belly. To look nice or to make efforts to be presentable to each other just did not happen anymore.

You started liking what I liked and also disliked what you previously liked simply because I did not like it. Even I conformed to your ways. We had become so much as one that our entities collapsed into one. Our happiness's and worries were one. We were no longer different persons with different viewpoints. We were frighteningly one. Though for the world we were such a well-adjusted couple."

Suhasini kept quiet. I looked at her with incredulity. What as she saying. For all this long, I had thought that we had achieved perfection in marriage. Myth.

She appeared to organize her thoughts.

"Similarly, my shame was yours too. When you found me in bed with Adi, you were more ashamed than annoyed. I was supposed to feel the shame alone but you were feeling it on my behalf. You were more embarrassed as if it was an indiscretion by you. Guilty of barging in unannounced.

That night you behaved like a father who tries to cover up for his son's mistakes. You were not the possessive husband flying in an uncontrolled rage at Adi or me!

Rather, you escorted back Adi. You were considerate and kind to him as if he had just made a silly mistake that should be overlooked.

I have never seen you sleep in your jeans and shirt. You were uncomfortable and slept fitfully. For the first time, I was so livid with myself, for losing the control that I always cherished. I cried in anger but it did not give me solace. I had lost it.

Throughout the day, you kept consoling me trying to make me comfortable. That made me more miserable. We should have thrashed out the matter. You should have been angry. I kept looking at you to see that spark of anger. The only thing that I saw was sadness and some fear. The fear of losing me.

What I did was of least concern to you? You were simply letting me go. You did not ask for my relationship with Adi because had I told you that I was leaving you for him, you would have allowed me, for my sake. My happiness was supreme. Yours? It didn't matter.

I was like "the old toothbrush", of supreme sentimental value whether it's useful or not. Something that's just a habit."

Her eyes were moist, I could feel it. I failed to understand her intense hatred for herself. In her mind, she was convinced that she had let herself down. What I thought didn't matter at all.

She was in agony, I knew. In great pain, she continued her confession.

Suhasini continued, "Every time I looked at your gift, I felt despondent and I tried to scrutinize my own actions. There was nothing much to analyze. Adi was younger, stronger and in love with me. To him, I was an object of desire. He could do anything for me, even the most preposterous things. On the other hand, I had myself switched you off by assimilating you in me. Your entity as a lover had ceased to exist long back. Adi ignited that passion in me that decimated all my control, all my resolutions and I was blown away by this tornado."