After Five Years as a Stay-at-Home Husband

1
My husband, Mike, was an Ivy League prodigy.
The moment he graduated, he was flooded with offers from Fortune 500 companies, each one a golden ticket to a brilliant career. But for me, he traded it all in to become a stay-at-home dad.
To everyone else, I was the woman who had it all, the one they all envied.
In the dead of night, lying beside him in the quiet dark after wed made love, he fell asleep. On a sudden, reckless impulse, I picked up his phone.
My face smiled back at me from the lock screen.
But pinned to the top of his chat history was a woman named Leos Mom. She was the mother of our daughter Lilys friend from preschool.
A new message from her popped up: "Mike, it's getting cold tomorrow. Don't forget to bundle up."
Mike had replied with a GIF of a nodding kitten. "You too," he'd written.
I scrolled up, my thumb flying across the screen, page after page, hundreds of them. On all those countless nights I was stuck at the office working late, they had been here, trading these small, intimate words of care.
I couldnt remember the last time hed sent me a GIF, or even asked if I was tired after a long day.
I didn't sleep a wink. I read their entire chat history, from the very beginning to the very end.
Thousands of pages.
Mike never said he liked her, never said he loved her.
But he would brag to her about a new recipe hed perfected. Hed send her a goofy, teary-eyed dragon meme asking for sympathy. When the temperature plunged, hed ask her if shed switched to a warmer blanket
"Huge storm tonight, there might be thunder. Is your Leo scared of it?"
"Not at all! He's a brave little guy. It's me, his mom, who gets so scared I can't sleep."
"Don't worry. If you're scared, I'll stay up and chat with you until you fall asleep." He followed it with a GIF of a cat flexing its muscles.
"Okay!" she replied, with a GIF of a cat throwing confetti.
He hadn't sent me a GIF in years.
That was the night of the storm of the century, when thunder cracked over the city all night long. I was trapped at the office, unable to get a cab, and ended up huddled in my desk chair, terrified, snatching bits of restless sleep.
Hed sent me one text confirming I wasn't coming home, and then silence.
All his comfort, all his care, had been funneled to another woman.
As dawn broke, he stirred. His eyes fluttered open and landed on me, sitting up in bed, his phone in my hand. He froze for a fraction of a second before casually wrapping an arm around me, smoothly plucking the phone from my grasp.
"You're up early. It's your day off, isn't it? Come back to sleep with me."
He nuzzled my neck, not a trace of panic in his voice.
I snatched the phone back, opened the chat with "Leo's Mom," and shoved the screen in his face. "Don't you have something you want to explain to me?" I asked, my voice a carefully constructed wall of calm.
"Oh. Lily's good friend at preschool is named Leo. That's his mom. I just ask her for parenting tips sometimes."
"If it makes you unhappy, I'll delete her."
And just like that, he tapped the red delete button. It was done.
He looked me straight in the eye, his gaze clear and open.
Suddenly, my all-night anguish felt absurd, like a fit of baseless jealousy. He made it seem like I was the one making a big deal out of nothing.
I said nothing.
He tightened his arm around my waist and started tickling me. "Come on, my beautiful wife, it's the weekend. Give that brilliant brain of yours a rest. She's nobody important. You're the only one I love, always."
He teased and tickled until I was breathless with laughter, and for a moment, the dark thoughts were pushed aside.
And just like that, it was over.
After all, we had been in love for eight years. We had our daughter.

2
After he deleted "Leo's Mom," my old habit of never touching his phone vanished.
I started checking it from time to time.
He never stopped me.
And I never again found any suspicious chats with other women.
Our life slid back onto its comfortable tracks.
As usual, he would drop Lily off at preschool after I left for work.
One day, my company organized a family day event. I was on my way back from a client meeting and passed right by the preschool, so I decided to pick Lily up myself.
From a distance, I saw them sitting on a bench in the little park next to the school. A delicate-looking woman with long hair and a gentle air was speaking to Mike.
"She found out, didn't she, Mike? She's the one who deleted me."
I froze.
"Yeah, she wasn't happy," he said. "But I got a new phone. If you need anything, you can call me on this number."
He handed her a brand-new phone.
"You should use this to call me from now on," she said, her voice soft. "Your old one is so slow. Think of this as a thank you gift for making Lily breakfast all those times."
And the phone he was holding, his own phone, was clearly the matching pair to the one he'd just given her.
My hand tightened around my own phone, its paint peeling at the edges. The cold metal dug into my palm.
It was one of the matching family phones hed bought when I was pregnant with Lily. One for him, one for me, and one for our baby.
I remember him holding me close, his cheek pressed to my belly, whispering, "Sweetheart, Mommy and Daddy and you will all have the same phone. By the time youre five, it will be filled with all our happy memories."
"And if they get old," he'd promised, "we'll get a new set together. A new family of phones for our family of three."
Lily was four now. Not quite five. But he couldnt wait.
A wave of hollow pain, carried on the autumn wind, crawled up my legs and seized my heart.
But I had Lily. We had been through so much together.
My parents and my brother died in a car crash when I was in college. I lost my entire family in a single night. He was the one who stayed by my side, day and night, a steady anchor in the crushing darkness. He held me together when I was falling apart. Without him, I might have just faded away in that house filled with the ghosts of their laughter and love.
And after Lily was born, he was the one who encouraged me to chase my dreams. He voluntarily gave up his high-paying job to stay home and take care of her.
The memories of his love were countless, undeniable
He had loved me so, so much.
I stared at my husband, bathed in the gentle sunlight, speaking so softly to another woman, and my world began to feel unreal.
They hadn't really done anything, had they? Not really. Maybe Id mistaken the phones. It was just a phone, a thank you gift for making breakfast
I tried to crush the ache in my chest.
Mike stood up and saw me.
I forced a smile and walked over, linking my arm through his. "Still here? Who's this?"
"When did you get here?" Mike asked, sidestepping my question. I could feel his body tense up.
"Just now," I said, leaning in to give him a cheerful kiss.
He visibly relaxed, the warm, smiling Mike returning. "This is Leo's mom. I wasn't great at making breakfast, so she used to bring some for Lily."
"We were just talking about picky eaters," he added.
Leos mom, Sophia, glanced at Mike and then laughed, covering her mouth. "You two are so sweet together. No wonder Lily is so adorable."
"Well, I won't keep you. I should get going," she said. She held up the new phone Mike had given her, wiggling it in a little wave.
The screen caught the sun, flashing a sharp glare directly into my eyes. It stung.
My grip on Mike's arm tightened, harder and harder, until he winced and murmured, "Elara, what's wrong? You're hurting me."
I snapped back to reality, leaning my head on his shoulder coquettishly. "Mike, can you blow in my eye? I think I got something in it."
He bent down, his hands gently on my shoulders, and carefully blew into my eye.
The air from his lips was cool against my skin, and my eyes began to water. The tears welled up, spilling over, a silent, unstoppable stream.
Through the shimmering blur, his face grew indistinct.
What am I going to do? I still love you so much.

3
The weather turned colder, and Lily's preschool was about to break for the winter holidays.
Maybe my breakdown in the park had shaken him, because the new phone he'd bought never lit up.
But I couldn't shake the unease coiling in my gut.
One evening after dinner, while Lily was playing in the living room, I brought it up.
"Mike, I'm up for a promotion. After the New Year, I might be transferred to the head office in Bridgewater to be a department director. I was thinking we could all move there together."
"My parents are in Bridgewater anyway," I continued, rambling on. "We wouldn't have to come back. We can just put the house here on the market."
"The schools are better there, too. It would be a better environment for Lily to grow up in"
He was unusually quiet for a long time. But in the end, he agreed.
That night, the new phone disappeared from his drawer.
He took Lily out for a walk that lasted an hour.
Watching him from the window, carrying our daughter back towards the building, I told myself that once they had no more excuses, no more opportunities to see each other, everything would be fine. Mike would be my Mike again.
Due to work commitments, I took Lily to Bridgewater ahead of schedule. I left her with my parents while I sorted out her school enrollment. Mike stayed behind to handle the sale of our house, planning to join us in a couple of days.
Two days later, he called. "I've found a buyer," he said, "but they're being difficult about a few things. I'm trying to negotiate. I'll be there the day after tomorrow."
I could hear the supposed buyer in the background, loudly picking apart our home.
I didn't doubt him. I just told him to take care of himself and to dress warmly.
The next day was Mike's birthday.
That afternoon, Lily and I video-called him to sing "Happy Birthday."
But later that night, after working late, I came home to an empty apartment, and the loneliness hit me like a tidal wave. I missed him so much it was a physical ache.
We hadn't been apart this long in years, and especially not on his birthday.
I booked a flight for that same night, took a few days off work, and decided to fly back to surprise him. Id help him finish up with the house, and wed come back together.
My heart hammered in my chest, a frantic drumbeat of longing.
I landed, grabbed a taxi, and even stopped to buy a birthday cake. I practically ran the whole way back to our building.
Standing downstairs, I saw the warm, yellow glow of light in our apartment window.
It was late. Normally, he'd be in bed by now, holding me.
I pressed the elevator button several times, but one of the cars was stuck on the 16th floorour floor.
With no time to think, I bolted for the stairs, taking them two at a time, my lungs burning by the time I reached the top.
Our front door was slightly ajar.
The apartment was a mess, probably from the packing. I smiled to myself, tiptoeing toward the bedroom, planning my surprise.
But my next step never landed. I was frozen in place.

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