I thought my honesty had tipped the balance.
After I told him about my fear—about losing myself, about becoming rootless—I expected distance. Silence. A careful retreat while we both pretended everything was fine.
Instead, he grew quieter.
Not withdrawn. Not cold. Just… thoughtful. As if something long-held had finally been given permission to breathe.
It was two nights later when he spoke.
We were sitting together, the day already behind us, the room wrapped in the kind of tired calm that follows difficult conversations. He wasn't looking at me when he started.
"I've been afraid too," he said.
The words landed softly, but they changed the air between us.
I turned toward him. "Of what?"
He exhaled slowly, like someone preparing to step into cold water.
"Of being the reason you lose parts of yourself," he said.
I didn't answer right away.
"I know I talk about starting over like it's something I can handle," he continued. "New language. New system. New life. And I can. Or at least—I think I can."
He finally looked at me then. His eyes weren't uncertain. They were honest.
"But I'm terrified," he said, "that one day you'll wake up somewhere unfamiliar and realize you followed me into a life that never truly felt like yours."
I had never heard him speak like this before.
Not because he hid things—but because some fears don't show themselves until love asks them to.
"I'm afraid you'll stay," he said quietly, "and resent me silently."
That sentence hurt more than anything I had imagined.
"I'm afraid that your patience will become endurance," he went on. "That you'll be strong for so long that you forget you're allowed to want more."
He paused, swallowing.
"And I'm afraid that if that happens… you'll leave—not because you stopped loving me, but because loving me asked too much."
I reached for him instinctively.
But he continued, as if he needed to say it all before courage ran out.
"Sometimes I worry," he said, "that my love comes with conditions I never intended. Borders. Laws. Distance. That choosing me means choosing a harder life—and that isn't fair."
The word fair echoed between us.
Because love, we had learned, is rarely fair.
"I don't want to be someone you have to escape from to save yourself," he said.
Silence followed—not empty, but full.
I understood then why he had listened so carefully when I spoke. Why he hadn't rushed to reassure me. He wasn't just hearing my fear.
He was recognizing his own.
"I never told you this," he said, softer now, "but when I imagine our future, the part that scares me isn't where we live."
I waited.
"It's the possibility that one of us will become smaller so the other can stay."
Something inside me shifted.
Not because the fear disappeared—but because it was finally shared.
That night, we didn't fix anything.
We didn't promise solutions or timelines or bravery beyond what we had. We just named the truth together:
That love was not asking us to choose each other blindly.
It was asking us to protect each other—even from ourselves.
I rested my forehead against his.
"Let's not build a future," I said, "where either of us has to disappear to make it work."
He smiled—not relieved, not hopeful. Just steady.
"Then we build slowly," he said.
And for the first time in days, fear loosened its grip—not because it was gone, but because it was no longer mine alone.