What might have been

Even though I had only gotten the job where I met Eloise because it was closer to where my wife lived when we got married, I thought about how I could have possibly met Eloise anyway.

I had recently graduated from college, which, even though it had occurred after I was married, had also prompted me to start looking for a new job. Perhaps, if I had never met my wife, I might have ended up at the same job where Eloise and I met. I would have been unmarried and Eloise and I could have started a romantic relationship without the fetters of my marriage standing between us.

Or, even if I had not started working there, Eloise and I might have crossed paths. Eloise, frustrated with her single-hood, had recently made efforts to widen her dating circle by starting to hang out with an older coworker named Yvonne. Yvonne and I had quite a few friends in common, actually, she being around my same age and thus hanging out with a lot of the same single people that I had hung around with before my marriage.

In any case, as I drifted off to sleep, I was filled with slight regret. I still loved my wife, and wanted what was best for her. I couldn't simply cheat on her... Her former husband had done that to her, which had not only devastated her but had led to their divorce and my son's subsequent alienation from his father. I couldn't put the both of them through that again. It did seem though, that as callous and selfish as it was, that if I had never met my wife perhaps I would have been happier in the long run.

These thoughts continued to run through my head as I fell asleep, and they continued to affect my relationship with my wife. The distance between us grew. Though we stayed together, and I never said anything about any of this to her, she must have been able to tell. I was trapped in my own world, focused on what might have been. But, like my wife, I was unwilling or unable to do anything about it.

We lived our lives, with moments of happiness in an otherwise dreary existence. In our own way, we were happy. We were perhaps not as happy as we might have been, but we were not as unhappy as we might have been, either. I guess that, having made the choices I made, I just had to be satisfied with that.