Love, Loathing, and the Long Game

They tell you marriages last because of love. That’s the story we’re fed in films, in vows, in the saccharine slogans stitched into cushions. Love conquers all. Love endures. Love keeps the flame alive.

But I’ve lived long enough to know better.

It isn’t love that keeps couples together. Not always. Sometimes, it’s the loathing. Sometimes, it’s the long game.

And it’s not the kind of loathing that explodes in fights or slamming doors. No — that would be too honest, too final. The loathing that sustains couples like mine is quieter, colder. It’s a muttered insult that never leaves the mouth. A thought that festers behind the eyes. A disgust that sits at the breakfast table in silence, chewing the same toast day after day.

That loathing binds. It stabilises. It becomes the glue.

Illusions

From the outside, you’d never guess. That’s part of the cruelty — we look so damn ordinary. We sit together at barbecues, pass the salad tongs, and talk about mortgage rates. Neighbours wave, friends smile, relatives toast our anniversaries.

“Look at them,” they say. “Still going strong.”

They see stability and mistake it for love. They don’t notice the thousand tiny tells: the lack of touch, the way our eyes don’t meet when we talk, the measured space between our bodies on the couch.

What they see is two people who haven’t left each other. What they don’t see is that sometimes, not leaving is the greatest act of violence.

Toxic Stability

Here’s the secret: predictable misery is easier than unpredictable freedom. That’s the long game.

You get used to it. To the silence, to the distance, to the bed where one person always sleeps facing the wall. You tell yourself it’s bearable. You tell yourself it’s just a phase. You tell yourself it’s safer to stay.

And maybe it is. Stability, even toxic stability, is its own kind of drug. It dulls the edges of reality. It makes you believe that endurance is a virtue. That survival is success.

But endurance isn’t noble. It’s corrosive. It wears you down until you no longer remember who you were before the long game began.

Ritual Resentment

The morning coffee is made without asking. Not kindness, not care — just routine. The clink of a spoon in a cup, a sound more intimate than words but stripped of meaning.

Dinner eaten in silence, the knife scraping the plate louder than any conversation. The predictable grunt of a chair pushed back, the shuffle of feet away from the table.

The occasional touch — perfunctory, hollow, performed for an audience when friends are near. A hand on the shoulder, a kiss on the cheek. Acts of theatre, staged for outsiders who want to believe the play is still running smoothly.

Rituals hold us together. Not love, not tenderness. Just the rehearsed motions of a long-dead script.

The Long Game

People ask why couples like us stay. Why not leave? Why not break the cycle?

They don’t understand that the long game is about endurance. It’s about testing how long two people can survive together without joy, without passion, without connection. It’s a battle of wills, and neither side wants to lose.

Leaving would mean admitting defeat. Leaving would mean saying: This didn’t work.

So we stay. We hold our ground. We sit across from each other at the table like two soldiers in a war that no one else can see.

It isn’t about who loves longer. It’s about who loathes longer — and better.

The SEETHINGS Connection

In SEETHINGS, that’s exactly what I wanted to capture. Not a marriage held together by love, but by its opposite. A bond sustained by tension, by silence, by the long game of resentment.

The protagonist wants tenderness but accepts routine instead. He can’t have intimacy, so he clings to endurance. The very act of not leaving becomes his proof of strength.

But that endurance is sinister. It isn’t stability — it’s slow decay. It’s violence without blood. It’s cruelty without evidence.

That’s what fascinates me: the idea that the most dangerous form of intimacy is not passion, not hatred, but the toxic stillness in between.

Facades

When you’re inside it, you become skilled at disguise. You can laugh when required. You can nod at the right stories. You can smile for photographs.

And no one suspects a thing.

That’s how toxic stability survives: it hides in plain sight. It thrives on the illusion of normalcy. Outsiders reassure you that everything looks fine, and you let them. Their lies become your comfort.

You tell yourself: If no one else sees the cracks, maybe they’re not really there.

But you know better. You feel the fractures every time you sit in silence and realise the silence is all you have left.

The Cost

Endurance comes at a price.

You stop recognising yourself. You forget what it felt like to be touched with tenderness. You forget the sound of laughter that wasn’t forced. You forget that stability is supposed to feel safe, not suffocating.

And yet, you endure.

That’s the long game’s final cruelty: it convinces you that survival is enough. That as long as the house stands, the relationship must still be alive.

But sometimes houses stand long after the people inside them are dead.

It’s Complicated

Love doesn’t always keep people together. Sometimes, it’s loathing. Sometimes, it’s the endurance of two people locked in a private war, unwilling to surrender because surrender means change, and change is too terrifying to risk.

That’s the truth I’ve seen, the truth I write, the truth I live.

So, the next time you see a couple celebrating another anniversary, don’t assume it’s love that’s kept them there. Look closer. Watch their silence. Watch their body language. You might see the toxic stability that really binds them — and you might wonder how long their long game will last.

Because sometimes, the longest marriages aren’t the happiest. They’re just the ones where neither party blinked first.

–Michael (Dark fiction. Author of SEETHINGS (the first book), free for a limited time)