Eric had always thought of marriage as a union where two souls became one, two lives woven together into a single fabric. With Jane, he once felt he had found that unity. Their early years were filled with laughter, midnight walks, whispered dreams about the future, and the warmth of belonging to each other. Yet, years later, their home echoed with silence. Conversations became short and perfunctory; dinners were quiet rituals; the bed they shared felt like a border dividing nations rather than a space of intimacy.
It began subtly. Jane grew distant, brushing off Eric’s attempts to hold her hand. At night, when he reached for her, she turned away. When he asked what was wrong, she offered vague excuses—tiredness, stress, headaches. Eric wanted to believe her. He wanted to think this was a passing season. But something in her eyes—something cold, unreachable—told him otherwise.
One night, while folding laundry, Eric noticed Jane’s phone buzzing on the dresser. Normally, he respected her privacy, but the repeated flashes of a name he didn’t recognize—“Daniel”—gnawed at him. His hands trembled as he picked it up. A message glowed on the screen: “Last night was amazing. I can’t stop thinking about you.”
Eric’s breath caught. The walls of the room seemed to close in. He set the phone down carefully, as if it were something fragile that might shatter. His mind reeled. The truth he had feared was here: Jane’s rejection of him was not rejection of intimacy itself—it was rejection of him. That night, Eric didn’t sleep. He lay awake, staring at the ceiling, his thoughts circling like vultures. He remembered their wedding vows, spoken with trembling voices and tearful smiles. “For better or worse, in sickness and in health, till death do us part.” He had taken those words seriously. But Jane—what had those promises meant to her?
The next morning, he confronted her.
“Jane,” he began softly, his voice already breaking, “who is Daniel?”
She froze, the color draining from her face. For a moment, she seemed caught between denial and confession. Then, with a sigh, she muttered, “Eric… I didn’t want you to find out this way.”
“So it’s true?” His voice cracked. “You’ve been with someone else?”
Her silence was answer enough. Finally, she whispered, “Yes. I can’t explain it all, but I feel alive with him in a way I don’t with you.”
The words hit Eric like a blow. Alive with him. Dead with me. The line was cruel in its honesty.
Eric turned away, pacing the room. His hands clenched into fists. He wanted to shout, to demand answers, to ask her how she could betray the man who had loved her, protected her, built a life with her. But the rage dissolved into something heavier - sorrow. A grief so profound it hollowed him out.
In the weeks that followed, Eric moved like a man haunted. At work, he forced smiles, though colleagues noticed the strain in his eyes. At night, the bed was colder than ever, Jane lying beside him in body but gone in spirit. She no longer hid her late-night outings, no longer cared to explain. It was as if she had already left, though her clothes still hung in the closet, her perfume still lingered in the air.
Eric often found himself staring at the globe in his study, a relic from his father’s office. One evening, he spun it absentmindedly and his eyes fell on the concept of antipodes - points on opposite sides of the Earth, bound by geometry yet separated by the greatest possible distance. That was him and Jane. Once close, now as far apart as two souls could be. The marriage vows remained, like the Earth’s axis connecting those points, but the closeness was gone. He loved her still, but she had become unreachable, her heart planted firmly in another hemisphere.
The knowledge tormented him. Yet within his grief, Eric began to realize something: he could not control Jane’s choices. He could not drag her back to their vows, nor force her to love him again. Her betrayal was a wound he could not undo, but it was also a mirror—showing him that his worth did not depend on her faithfulness.
One evening, he told her quietly, “Jane, I can’t live like this anymore. I’ve tried to hold on, but I see now—you’ve already let go. If your heart belongs elsewhere, then I won’t chain you here. But I also won’t live as a shadow in my own home.”
She looked at him, startled by his calmness. For the first time in months, tears welled in her eyes. “Eric… I never wanted to hurt you.”
“You did,” he said, his voice steady. “And you can’t undo that. But I will not let this betrayal define me. I may have lost you, but I will not lose myself.”
In the days that followed, Eric began to rebuild. He sought comfort in friends, in prayer, in long walks where he let the air clear his mind. The pain was still raw, but he was learning to live with it, to carry it without letting it crush him. He knew that healing would be slow, but he also knew he had taken the first step toward it.
And Jane? She remained the opposite point on his globe—forever connected by memory, but now distant, unreachable, a reminder of a love that had turned into betrayal. She was his antipode: once the nearest to his heart, now the farthest from it.
But Eric also understood something new. The Earth is vast, and no man must remain fixed at his antipode forever. Life offered him the chance to turn, to move, to find another place where love could be whole again. And though Jane had betrayed him, she had also set him free—free to rediscover who he was, and perhaps, one day, to find someone who would stand not at the opposite pole, but at his side.
