At first I told myself it was temporary. I taught all day, tutored at night, and ran a small shop online while he stayed home talking about businesses that never opened. Rent, groceries, insurance, and the quiet extras of a shared life came out of my accounts. When I asked when he would take steady work, he had a reason ready. The market was wrong. The timing was wrong. I was impatient. I kept paying because I thought love meant holding the line until he caught up. He grew comfortable. I grew tired.

The change did not start with a speech. I stopped covering everything that was ours and paid only what was mine. Lights and late notices became his problem. He called that cruelty. I called it the first honest math of the marriage. Then he asked for money to start a company and brought no plan, no numbers, no risk of his own. I refused. Not long after, I found a credit account opened in my name and a balance I had never approved. That was not a rough patch. That was a decision he made while I was at work earning the life he spent.