“I Knew It Was Love When I Couldn’t Lie to Her on Tuesdays”

I used to lie all the time. Little ones. Polished ones. The kind that pass through people like air. But on Tuesdays, with her—never. Something about the stillness of that day, the way she wore her tiredness, the way her voice came slower, unarmored—I couldn’t do it. Not even a soft lie. Not even to protect her. That’s when I knew I loved her. Not in the way that makes movies, but in the way that interrupts your muscle memory.

Love, for me, didn’t arrive like thunder. It crept in, rearranged the furniture, and waited for me to notice. I didn’t. Not right away. It showed up in the things I stopped doing. I didn’t check my phone as much. I didn’t imagine other lives, other lips. I didn’t correct her when she got the lyrics wrong. That was new. I used to find tiny errors in people and turn them into reasons to run. But with her, I let things stand. Even the mess.

The first time I saw her cry wasn’t cinematic. Her face didn’t crumple. Her voice didn’t shake. She just blinked faster than usual, then pressed the heel of her hand into her left eye like she was trying to erase something. I didn’t move. I just sat there, watching her pretend not to need anything. That’s another thing love taught me: it’s not always about stepping in. Sometimes it’s about not saving. Letting people feel their own weight, without taking it from them.

There was a night—we’d just fought over something idiotic, I can’t even remember what. She stood at the sink, furiously washing a spoon. Just one spoon, over and over. I walked over, and I wanted to say something grand, something to end the tension. But all I could think to ask was, “Are you cold?” She wasn’t. She was wearing two sweaters. But she said yes, and I wrapped my arms around her back, and we just stood there. Maybe for three minutes. Maybe for years.

Love isn’t the headline moments. It’s not when you first kiss, or when you first make love, or even when you first break. It’s in the second time you break—and how they handle that version of you. It’s in how they react to your ugly laugh. To your worst opinions. To the silence that comes after you’ve said too much.

I remember how she touched books. Always with both hands. Like they might fall apart otherwise. That’s how she touched people, too. Not just me. Everyone. She gave her attention like it was the last thing she had. And it made you want to be deserving of it.

She didn’t teach me how to love. She just loved in front of me, and I tried to keep up.

I wish I could tell you that I held onto it. That I honored it. That I didn’t flinch. But I did. I left. Not in body, but in effort. In presence. I got lazy. I mistook her steadiness for permanence. I forgot that love isn’t an object—it’s an action. You stop moving, it stops living. Simple.

She told me once, “I never needed you to be extraordinary. I just needed you to be consistent.” I nodded like I understood. I didn’t. Not until months after she was gone. When I was making coffee and realized I no longer knew how she liked hers.

I used to think love was a kind of possession. That when someone loves you, you have them. But it’s not. It’s a loan. A fragile, temporary loan. And you don’t get to keep it just because you said the right words once.

Love is maintenance. It’s uncomfortable conversations. It’s staying in the room. It’s asking questions you’re afraid to hear the answers to. It’s apologizing without inserting the word but. It’s letting their sadness in, even when you’re drowning in your own.

I don’t romanticize what we had. But I carry it. Every day. In how I listen. In what I notice. In how I shut up when someone needs silence more than solutions.

She’s gone. She’s somewhere else now, with someone better, maybe. Or maybe just someone present. But her love left marks. Not scars—marks. Subtle shifts in how I exist. I don’t leave lights on anymore. I always carry gum. I answer calls from my mother. I remember birthdays.

So no, I don’t think love is everything. But I think real love—the kind that changes your wiring—it’s the one thing that leaves you more human than you were before.

That’s what she gave me. That’s what I try to be.

She used to say I loved in past tense, even while I was still there. I didn’t understand it then. But now, years later, I hear it in the way I talk about my father, too—like he’s someone I loved, not someone I love. And he’s still alive. It’s just easier that way, isn’t it? To time-stamp emotion. To pin it down to a year, a city, a version of you that’s no longer culpable. Easier than admitting it’s still kicking inside your chest, like a bird you forgot you caged.

I’ve started to notice how men talk about love. Always from a distance. Always in the third person. It’s her favorite restaurant, her favorite song, her favorite season. Never “she laughed so hard once, she peed a little, and I loved her more for it.” Never “she hated the smell of oranges, so I stopped buying them.” We don’t talk about the granular. The stuff that actually mattered. The exact shape of their leaving. The weight of the sweater they left behind. How you wore it once when your bones felt hollow and you wanted to remember something warm that didn’t belong to you anymore.

Here’s a truth I haven’t said out loud: I ruined a good woman because I thought she would wait forever.

We’re not taught to hold delicate things. We're handed them, sure—but nobody tells you how fast your hands need to close, how still you need to stay to not spook the damn thing. She didn’t want much. Just consistency, a little curiosity. Someone who meant it when they asked, “How are you?”

I answered like a man trying to end a call.

There are nights now where I miss her in textures. The curve of her shoulder under an old cotton tee. The faint scent of her shampoo on my pillow—jasmine, I think. Or maybe something else. It’s fading. That’s the part no one prepares you for. Love fades unevenly. Some details go quickly. Others stick around just to mock you. I still remember the way she said “anyway” when she was done being angry but not ready to forgive.

You don’t realize how much of your language was shared until you try to speak without them. I used to say things like “sun spaghetti” and “ghost skin,” and she got it. She got it. Now I say those things and people think I’m high or weird or broken. And maybe I am. But she never made me feel like I had to justify the strange parts.

I’ve tried loving again. I’ve tried the apps, the brunches, the small talk that makes your tongue go dry. But nothing’s stuck. Not because they’re not lovely—some are. But because I’m still using her as a ruler. And no one deserves to be measured against someone I failed.

And still—I believe in love. I really do. But not the kind that starts in the stomach. That part lies. That part is just adrenaline with a tuxedo. I believe in the kind that starts low, in the knees maybe, something structural. The kind you feel when you’re assembling IKEA furniture together and no one storms out. The kind that shows up on hospital days. On flat-tire mornings. When they sit next to you on the bathroom floor while you’re throwing up dreams you didn’t get.

I’m not looking for perfect anymore. I’m just looking for willing. Someone who can hurt and be hurt without turning it into distance. Someone who can say, “That thing you did made me feel small,” without weaponizing it. Someone who still wants to sleep on the same side of the bed when we’re not speaking.

Sometimes, I wonder if I’ve already had my great love and lost it. If that was the story. Full stop. And now I’m just supposed to carry it forward—like an heirloom, like a scar I don’t cover up. Maybe love doesn’t repeat. Maybe it evolves into different things. A deep friendship. A quiet loyalty. A peace.

Or maybe, one day, someone will sit across from me, tuck their foot under my knee, and just say my name like it means something again.

And I’ll believe them.

Some nights I replay it—how I became the villain in a story that started soft. Not a loud villain. Not a hurricane. I never threw things. I never yelled. I just stopped trying. That’s the kind of villainy no one warns you about—the slow, passive kind. The kind that pretends to be tired when they’re really just indifferent. The kind that forgets what day it is and doesn’t think to ask how yours went. I didn’t cheat. I didn’t hit. I just became a man-shaped absence. And for that, there’s no dramatic apology scene. Just echoes.

The worst part? She didn’t even leave in rage. She left calmly. She folded her clothes like she always did, humming something low, like the act of leaving was just another task on her list. I remember thinking how unfair it was that I wanted her to scream. I wanted a chair thrown, a dish shattered. I wanted evidence that I mattered, even in failure. But that’s the cruelty of slow neglect—by the time they leave, you’ve already disappeared in them. You mourned them while lying next to them, so when they go, it almost feels polite.

There was a night, weeks before she left, that I’ve never told anyone about. She stood in the doorway of our kitchen at 2:14 a.m., wearing one of my old sweatshirts. No makeup. Eyes tired in that way that feels permanent. And she asked me—softly, without accusation—“Are you still in this?” I looked at her for three whole seconds and said, “Yeah, of course.”

But I wasn’t.

And she knew. She knew. I could see it on her face. She didn’t say another word. Just turned, filled a glass with water, and went to bed. And I stood there, ashamed of how easy it was for me to lie to someone who once made my chest feel like it was made of thunder.

You want the darkest part?

I don’t miss her. Not exactly. I miss the man I was when I loved her well. I miss the self I left behind because I got lazy. I miss the way she looked at me like I was good. Not perfect—good. And I miss that because now, when someone looks at me that way, I don't believe them.

I thought I was safe from regret. Thought it was a thing that hit other people—people who cheated, who yelled, who vanished. But regret is quieter than I imagined. It’s not a knife—it’s a dull ache in the mornings. It’s forgetting what her laugh sounded like and realizing you didn’t record it anywhere. It’s scrolling through photos and noticing how your eyes changed before you did.

And I kept going. Of course I did. We always do. I dated again. I laughed again. I even told someone I loved them again. But it never rang the same in my throat. It always felt like copying homework I didn’t understand.

Here’s the truth I sit with now, late at night when I’m too sober to lie to myself: love demands maintenance. And I stopped oiling the hinges. That’s it. That’s the whole crime. The love was still there, quietly waiting on the porch. I just stopped opening the door.

And now, years later, I’ve become that man who over-explains himself at dinner parties. Who says, “I used to be really in love once” like it’s a credential. Like love is a degree you earn and keep forever.

But it’s not. It’s perishable. It’s a daily choice. It’s work. And I didn’t show up for it.

And the irony? I didn’t leave her for someone else. I didn’t leave her for freedom. I left her for comfort. For numbness. For a version of myself that didn’t require accountability.

And now, on the bad nights—the nights where sleep won’t land—I think of the woman who asked me a simple question in a quiet kitchen, and I lied to her.

Not because I didn’t love her.

But because I didn’t want to do the work that love requires.

And that’s the kind of regret that doesn’t scream.

It hums.

It hums in your blood.

And it never, ever goes silent.

.    .    .