Linda was unbearable whenever she spoke about Anthony.
Not because she loved him. She didn’t.
Not because she wanted a future with him. She didn’t want that either.
What drove her mad was the fact that he wouldn’t say those three words.
“I love you.”
She craved them with the desperation of an addict waiting for a fix. She manoeuvred conversations toward them. She engineered moments after sex where emotions softened, and defences lowered. She praised him, withdrew from him, flirted with leaving him, then returned warmer than before. Every interaction carried the same hidden agenda.
Say it.
Just say it.
The strange part was that when asked whether she loved Anthony herself, she answered immediately.
“No.”
Not hesitation. Not confusion. Certainty.
She didn’t love him. She barely even liked him.
According to Linda, Anthony was arrogant, self-absorbed, emotionally lazy, and physically unimpressive. He wasn’t attentive. He didn’t prioritise her. He fitted her into the empty spaces between the rest of his life. Sometimes he arrived without even showering first, carrying the stale scent of his workday into the hotel rooms she’d carefully selected.
Yet she remained fixated on him.
Not because of romance.
Because of validation.
There was never supposed to be a relationship between them in the traditional sense. They both entered the arrangement with clarity. Each was married. Each had children, homes, routines, responsibilities, and financial entanglements neither wanted to destroy. Neither fantasised about running away together into some fantasy future.
The arrangement was designed to fix one thing.
Sex.
That was all.
Their marriages had become deserts. Intimacy had dried up long ago, replaced by routine, obligation, fatigue, and emotional distance. Anthony and Linda found each other at precisely the point where loneliness becomes practical instead of tragic.
They used each other well.
The sex was adventurous, reckless, energetic, and free from the emotional debris waiting for them at home. Afterwards, they returned to their spouses calmer, lighter, and temporarily repaired.
In many ways, the arrangement worked exactly as intended.
Except sex is rarely the only hunger operating beneath the surface.
Linda’s ego arrived in the room every bit as naked as her body did.
She needed to feel wanted. Chosen. Desired. Irreplaceable.
Anthony gave her enough to keep the machinery operating. He complimented her appearance. He made her feel sexually alive again. He desired her openly. After years of emotional starvation inside her marriage, that attention mattered.
But he withheld the one thing she truly wanted.
Love.
Or at least the performance of it.
That imbalance consumed her.
I pointed it out once. I told her the relationship wasn’t emotionally equal, even if it appeared to be physically equal. She listened carefully and eventually admitted I was probably right. She even claimed she was close to ending things.
But people rarely walk away from relationships that continue feeding their emotional wounds.
Especially when the wound itself is addicted to validation.
Linda didn’t really want to leave Anthony.
She wanted to conquer him.
That’s different.
She wanted one final victory before leaving. One final encounter in which he would surrender emotionally and say the words she’d spent months chasing.
Then she could reject him.
That was the fantasy.
Not love.
Power.
The SIM card incident happened after one of their arguments.
She ripped the prepaid SIM from her phone while driving and hurled it out the window onto the M1 freeway. The tiny piece of plastic vanished beneath speeding tyres and asphalt while she screamed out his name and a few choice words.
It sounded dramatic when she described it later.
Almost cinematic.
But underneath the anger was humiliation.
Because Anthony remained emotionally disciplined in ways she could not control.
I understood his side more than she expected me to.
Men often don’t say “I love you” during affairs because saying it changes the arrangement’s architecture. Sex can remain compartmentalised. Love destabilises things. Love introduces expectation, obligation, fantasy, and future consequence.
Why say something you don’t mean?
Especially when the arrangement is already functioning.
Anthony already had access to her body. He already had her availability. He already had her emotional investment. From his perspective, saying the words gained him nothing additional.
So he didn’t say them.
That restraint drove her insane.
She claimed she knew he didn’t love her and that she was “fine” with it. She smiled when she said it too, though the tension in her face betrayed her immediately. Her nose crumpled slightly at the edges in the way people do when trying to disguise emotional injury behind humour.
“I know he doesn’t love me,” she laughed. “That’s okay.”
But the missing SIM card lying somewhere on the freeway suggested otherwise.
People who are truly okay rarely stage symbolic emotional outbursts.
What fascinated me most was how little logic mattered once ego entered the equation.
Linda repeatedly criticised Anthony’s appearance, personality, selfishness, and behaviour. She openly described him as unworthy. In her mind, he was somehow beneath her.
Yet his emotional power over her remained enormous.
Because desire and ego are not democratic systems.
The ego does not ask:
“Is this person objectively suitable?”
The ego asks:
“Can this person validate me deeply enough to quiet my insecurity?”
Anthony unknowingly became the gatekeeper to her self-worth.
That was the real affair.
Not the sex.
The validation.
Sex was simply the delivery system.
Meanwhile, Anthony maintained control over two emotional worlds simultaneously. His wife remained in place at home while Linda waited anxiously for emotional scraps he never intended to provide. Linda hated this imbalance. In her mind, he controlled both women.
She found that intolerable.
I reminded her she was doing exactly the same thing with two men herself — her husband and Anthony — but that comparison never landed emotionally.
The ego rarely applies rules consistently.
By Monday morning, Linda had purchased another prepaid SIM card with cash.
Like the others before it, the receipt went straight into a rubbish bin outside the shop.
“I’m a good girl,” she said jokingly. “I remember to get rid of the evidence right away.”
Then she smiled.
The strange thing about affairs is that people often believe they are hiding desire when they are actually hiding dependency.
Linda didn’t need Anthony to love her.
She needed proof that she could make him do it.
And perhaps that’s the darker truth buried underneath many relationships — romantic or otherwise.
Sometimes people do not chase love at all.
Sometimes they chase validation.
–Michael (Dark Fiction. Author of SEETHINGS (the first book), free for a limited time)
Download eBook Now or Get Paperback Here
Love, lust, and lies collide on land and water. A temptress, a faithful wife, and a photographer haunted by shadows drift into a world of seduction, betrayal, and control.
Marriages unravel, secrets surface, and civility dissolves into primal instinct. Nothing is safe. No one is innocent.
SEETHINGS (first in the series) is downloadable and free for a limited time here.
Discover more from Michael Forman – Author of Dark Fiction & Drama
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