When

by Scott Solomon 

When your spouse isn’t disappointed when a babysitter fails to show up.

When your spouse gives the name of a dependable babysitter to someone else.

When your spouse refuses to block the kids from hosting weekend sleepovers, thereby blocking the privacy required for sexual intercourse. 

When your spouse and you don’t have sex anyway.

When your spouse demands that you begin each day with a positive attitude; serve a well-received breakfast before the household leaves for the day; serve a well-received dinner after the household returns from the day; allow the kids hours of after-dinner TikTok; bear sole responsibility for dragging the kids through belated homework and bedtime; and climb into bed only after said spouse has finished playing Call of Duty with a slew of cyberbuddies and fallen asleep.

When your spouse sleeps late while you struggle to rouse sleep-deprived kids for school and self for breadwinning each weekday morn.

When, after you’ve prepared the kids with time to spare, your spouse ill-prepares with no time to spare, so your family ends up suffering through church with a bevy of brats in the cry room each Sunday morn.

When, in the cry room, your spouse proclaims, “That’s how babies praise the Lord!”

When your spouse promises the kids will attend to their pretty-please new dog, only to foist feeding, walking, mopping, and scooping, inside and out, freezing and sweltering, exclusively on you.

When your spouse purchases an electric fence to confine the dog to the kitchen, only to lift the dog immediately over the barrier, so the dog can continue to have the run of the house to ransack, splatter, and soil.

When your spouse spends big bucks per month on instantly forsaken clothing, unwatched streaming services, and idle gym memberships.

When your spouse denies that discretionary expenditures are detrimental to saving for college.

When your spouse has you contemplating suicide, so the life insurance proceeds could send the kids to college.

When your spouse has you abandoning suicide, because the life insurance proceeds would be squandered on something other than sending the kids to college.

When your spouse has you, one way or another, resigned to an early demise.

When your spouse dismisses your depression as all in your head.

When your spouse brands tattoos, cafeterias, African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans as “ill-bred.”

When your spouse allows the kids to turn instantly orange at tanning parlors and don T-shirts declaring “Jesus is my homey.”

When your spouse repeatedly lectures you not to say or do anything that would reflect poorly on the family.

When your spouse solicits your opinion as a gauge by which the opposite course of action is taken.

When your spouse isn’t fooled when you offer the opposite of your honest opinion.

When your spouse blames you for everything.

When your spouse blames the in-laws for everything else.

When your spouse, after rejecting advice from a marital counseling session, escalates saying no.

When your spouse confirms your doubts about seeking professional help.

When your spouse, independent of gender, routinely calls you a bitch or a son-of-a-bitch loud enough for the kids to hear, if not see.

When you spouse has you asking, in silence, “What’s wrong with this picture?”

When your spouse discovers your secret journal—rife with venting about sex, politics, money, religion, childrearing, servitude, and other topics not discussed in polite company—and burns it in the fireplace in the middle of July.

When your spouse has faded you into the woodwork.

When your spouse falls out of love with you.

When your spouse, worse yet, falls out of like with you.

When your spouse has kept score, collected resentments, and compiled a list of deal breakers rivaling yours.

 

Scott Solomon has fiction in Chicago Quarterly Review, North American Review, Antioch Review, New Letters, Eclectica, Museum of Americana, Bull, Redivider, and other literary magazines. In addition to composing stories, Scott is at work on a novel. When not writing, he voluntarily helps seekers prepare for the GED.