This month's Compass is Presence. This week we explore it through Marriage - the final pillar in our monthly journey. These aren't lessons or solutions, but honest wrestling with what it means to be truly present when love doesn't echo back the way you hoped.
I lay beside her. Inches away. It might as well be miles. She breathes steady. Still. Familiar. My hand is close enough to touch her back, but I don't move. I don't know if it's distance or reverence. Maybe fear.
This isn't a fight. There's no resentment hanging in the air. Just a quiet that doesn't hold me. I stay. Every night. I show up. I carry weight. I speak gently. I provide. I don't disappear. But sometimes I wonder if disappearing would feel different.
This isn't about blame. It's not about what she does or doesn't do. It's about what presence has become. I thought presence would feel like connection. Like being seen, even in silence. Now it feels like being reliable. Useful. Predictable.
I don't want to be predictable. I want to be known. Not just for what I carry or that I stay. For me.
But I don't say that out loud. Not anymore. Not because I'm afraid of her. I'm afraid of what I hear when I say it. The ache in my own voice. The raw want of it. It makes me feel small. Weak. Like the boy who wanted to be chosen and learned not to ask.
So I remain. I reach less. I serve more. I do the work. I keep the rhythm. And part of me calls it love. Part of me knows it's something else. Which is when the dangerous thoughts begin.
I don't want to weaponize sacrifice. I don't want to build a quiet case in my head: "Look how faithful I am. Look how good. Look how much I've endured." I don't want to turn presence into proof. But some nights, like this one, I feel it happening. I feel the ledger forming. Not out of bitterness. Out of ache. A hunger to be mirrored—to see my love reflected back, not just absorbed. To be received.
I ask myself if I would still stay if nothing ever changed. The honest answer is yes. But I don't know if that's virtue or exhaustion. Maybe both.
Maybe this is what love looks like when it doesn't echo back. Maybe this is the altar. Not a shared flame, but a steady offering. Quiet. Unthanked. Still burning.
But staying does something to a man. Even if no one sees it. Especially then.
It shapes him. Not just in discipline, but in desire. It teaches him how to want without demand. How to give without transaction. How to stand without applause.
But it also tempts him. To become hard. To wear silence like a shield. To confuse invisibility with holiness. To vanish just enough that no one can hurt him again.
I feel both happening. The becoming and the retreating. The clarity and the numbness. And I don't always know which one is winning.
But I know this: What I do in this silence will become part of me. And part of what she remembers. And part of what our daughters believe love looks like.
So I hold. Not just the line. Not just the vow. I hold myself open.
Not for outcome.
For presence.
I turn onto my back. Stare at the ceiling. I don't ask for rescue. I ask for something quieter. If this is what love requires—this shape, this silence—can anything good still come from it?
Nothing answers. But I don't leave.
I stay. Not to be seen. Because I said I would.
This completes our month with Presence as our Compass. Each month brings a new virtue through the same four pillars: faith, fatherhood, work, and marriage. If you want to explore the complete archive of these honest wrestlings, it's available to paid subscribers.
If today's wrestling with presence in marriage resonated with your own journey, you can Buy Me a Coffee to support this work. Either way, thank you for choosing real questions over comfortable answers.
Where are you present in body but absent in heart?