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It wasn’t long after Alice had come home from her Chicago trip that I learned exactly why she’d been freaking out so much recently. While it was no secret to me that her books had a lot to do with my disease and the recovery from it, and while I knew it was emotionally draining for her to write about those things, the direct effect they were having on her life remained a mystery. That was mostly because she wouldn’t discuss it with me, probably out of guilt.

I hated that she felt that way. I’d expressed my frustration to our couples’ therapist as well as my individual therapist (and Shane, but she knew it before I said anything), and everyone agreed that it made sense for her to feel that way and that I shouldn’t think it was her way of shutting me out.

I understood that on a logical basis, but I was still a little bit resentful about it. I hated feeling guilty about the way she was feeling, when she couldn’t even bring herself to tell me what was bothering her. When I’d ask, she’d just wave me away and tell me that it was her own bullshit in her head, not me. And while I granted her that, I still hated the fact that she wouldn’t talk to me about it in detail.

I knew why. She was worried that if she discussed her lingering fears with me, I’d feel guilty, and she wanted to avoid making me feel that way. I don’t know if it entered her head, but that reaction was only making things worse. I wanted so badly to be at least a sounding board for her issues, because I knew they were tearing her apart inside. Knowing that she felt she couldn’t talk to me about them out of some sense of protection made me feel weak and ineffectual in the relationship.

Everyone who knew about it told me that it was natural. And I knew that; I really did. It wasn’t as if I enjoyed feeling the way I was feeling. I knew that Alice wasn’t trying to hurt me with her avoidance of the topic; she was avoiding it to shield me from pain. But it still made me feel like shit. As I kept mentioning to her, we were married and should be able to talk to each other about whatever was bothering us. She waved me away at that, too, and I had gotten a little pissy about it since.