My wife started yoga because of her back. That is the part I kept repeating to myself, as if the whole story could be made ordinary again by returning to the first reason. She had been working long hours in a solicitor’s office near Merrion Square, bent over files, coming home with one hand pressed to the small of her spine. I suggested swimming. Her sister suggested a class in Ranelagh. On a wet Tuesday evening, she rolled up an old blue mat and left the flat saying, “If I hate it, I’m blaming you both.”
For the first few weeks, yoga made her lighter. She came home flushed and hungry, talking about stretches I couldn’t pronounce, about breathing properly, about how strange it was to spend a full hour not performing for anyone. I liked seeing her like that. We had been married seven years, together for eleven, and life had narrowed itself into work, dinner, laundry, and half-watched television. Her happiness felt like good weather coming through the window.
Then she began mentioning Aoife. At first, Aoife was just “the woman beside me who keeps falling over during tree pose.” Then Aoife became the person who knew the best coffee near Portobello, the person who had recommended a book, the person who had gone through a terrible breakup and somehow still laughed with her whole face. I remember standing at the sink one night, rinsing plates, while my wife told me a story about Aoife getting locked out of her apartment in slippers. I laughed because it was funny. I also noticed she was smiling before she even got to the funny part.
Nothing dramatic happened. That was the cruelest thing. There was no lipstick on a collar, no secret hotel, no single moment I could point to and say, “There, that is where our marriage broke.” Instead, there were small absences. She checked her phone more often. She took longer walks after class along the canal. She started wearing a green jumper I had forgotten she owned. When I asked if everything was all right, she said yes too quickly, then looked ashamed of the answer.
One Friday in November, we went for a drink in a pub near Camden Street after work. Rain was ticking against the windows, and the place was loud enough that every conversation felt private. I had rehearsed anger on the way there. I had planned to ask who Aoife was, what was happening, whether I was being made a fool of. But when I looked at my wife across the small table, she seemed less guilty than frightened. So I said her name gently.
She cried before she spoke. Not loudly. Just tears slipping down while she stared at her hands. She told me she hadn’t planned anything, that Aoife hadn’t either, that it had begun as friendship and then become the thing she thought about when she woke up. She said she still loved me, which hurt more than if she had said she didn’t. Love, I learned that night, is not always a single room. Sometimes it is a house with doors you did not know were there.
I asked if they had kissed. She said yes. Once, after class, outside in the cold, near the Grand Canal. Then again. She said she had stopped it because she couldn’t bear lying to me. I wanted to be noble, but I was not. I said bitter things. I asked if our life had been so boring that all it took was a yoga mat and a woman with a nice laugh. She flinched, and I hated myself immediately, but I did not take it back.
For three weeks, we lived like careful strangers. She slept in the bedroom; I slept on the couch beneath a blanket too short for my feet. We made tea for each other out of habit
Note: Please be aware that these are written in confidentiality and there is not reference or mention of any real people and their sentiments here. Every incident and Story tends to be emotional so please read at your own emotional risk. Website is not responsible for anything related. HumansofDublin.io is not related to the photography project HumansofDublin by Peter Varga
