I Met Every Requirement. He Added Another. | Moving the Goalposts

The Griot (0:00)

The first thing he asked me to change was my laugh, not in an unkind way. We were in his car, driving back from a party, and he said smiling, You know, you have a really beautiful laugh. It is just a little loud in restaurants. If you brought it down a notch, I think it would be perfect. I said, Really? He said, Only if you want to. I just think you would be even more elegant.

I remember the street we were on. I remember the red light and the glow of the dashboard on his hands. I remember thinking, Nobody has ever said that to me. And then, almost at once, he is probably right. His name was Julian. We had been together four months. He was an architect, tall and precise, who ironed his shirts and spoken complete sentences. I was an elementary school teacher who laughed too loudly, ate cereal for dinner, and owned 11 mismatched mugs. I could not believe he had picked me. Everyone said, wow, he's a catch. I agreed. So I lowered my laugh. It took about a week. I told him that night, with a little pride, I have been working on the laugh. He said, I noticed. Thank you. That means a lot. For one whole evening, I was happy.

Then, in the following week, he mentioned that I had a habit of checking my phone at dinner. Gently, once again. He said, I just love when we are really present. I put my phone in my bag. I told him, no phone at dinner from now on. He kissed me and said, that makes me so happy. And two weeks later, he mentioned my clothes. This is the pattern. I want you to hear it. Because it moves very slowly. Each request was small. Each one, taken alone, was reasonable. And each time I met one, he thanked me, with warmth, with real affection. And the warmth lasted about as long as it took the next request to arrive. The laugh. The phone. The way I loaded the dishwasher. My weekend plans, which I should keep a little lighter so we could spend more time together.

My friends from college who were, he said kindly, perhaps not on the same path as me. My hair. The way I folded the towels. The cereal. I did all of it. That is the part I find hardest to say, I did every single thing and I did it well, because I am a person who finishes assignments.

I am a teacher. If you give me a rubric, I will hit it. And that was the trap, because there was no rubric. Every time I got to the end of the list, the list grew. The object I remember is a chalkboard. It hung in our kitchen, a small black one with a wooden frame, where I used to write the week's plans.

One evening in the fall, I came home from a hard day, and I found Julian standing in front of it with a piece of chalk. He had written a heading in his Clean Architects handwriting, it said, Goals for Us. Underneath, there were six lines. I stood there with my bag still on my shoulder. I said, What is this? He said, I thought it would be nice if we were more intentional. I want us to grow together. The six lines were things I had already been working on, keeping the apartment tidier, cooking at home more, being more on time, exercising three times a week, being more affectionate in public, being less anxious. I said, OK. He said, You don't have to, if it feels like too much. But I want us to be our best. I did every one of them. I had them all done by Christmas. I was cooking six nights a week. I was on time to everything. I had a gym membership and a calendar with color-coded entries. I was less anxious, which was a lie, because I had never been more anxious in my life. But I had learned to hide it. On Christmas Eve, he looked at the chalkboard. I watched him. I was so proud I could not breathe. He said, You know what I realized? I think I want us to think bigger. And he picked up the chalk. There were good evenings in those months, and I want to give you one because it explains why I stayed. It was a Saturday in November. Julian cooked. He made a mushroom risotto, stirring it for 40 minutes with a wooden spoon, and he put on a record, an old jazz album that he loved, and he lit a candle on the table. He told me about his grandfather, who had been a draftsman and had taught him to hold a pencil. I had never heard him talk about his grandfather. His voice went soft. At the end of the meal, he took my hand across the table and said, I am so lucky. I really am. I look at you and I think, how did I get here? I could have cried. I believed every word. It is difficult to explain, to someone who has not lived in it, that the warmth and the list came from the same person, that the man who held my hand across a candle-lit table was also the man who would, three days later, mention that my voice went up at the ends of sentences.