“I just feel so sorry for her,” Sheila said as they watched Tara, one of their co-workers, walk by.
“What do you think she did to drive him away?” Amber asked as she sat down with her Jenny Craig, fresh from the company microwave.
“What do you mean?”
“She must have done something. Husbands don’t just get up and leave without a reason.”
Sheila was too stunned to answer the question, but Amber didn’t seem to mind, since she promptly answered her own question. “I think she had been living alone too long before getting married.”
Sheila (who lived alone) asked, “What’s wrong with living alone?”
“You just get too used to having your own way. Living with someone else requires compromise, and she probably forgot how to do that. Maybe she hogged the covers or something and he was just tired of sleeping in the cold all the time.” Tara snickered. “I guess she’s the one left out in the cold now.”
Sheila considered this. She hoped to get married herself someday, but it seemed like everywhere she turned there was more and more proof that marriage didn’t always provide the happy ending that all her favorite fairy tales had promised they would. Instead, it was just half the battle. Once a woman got a ring on her finger, apparently she had to keep working to make sure it stayed there.
So many marriages ended in divorce these days, and it always left Sheila wondering how she could avoid such a fate. Could it come down to something as seemingly innocuous as the way she slept? She did like to sprawl across her bed. Maybe she should stop doing that, just in case she finally found Mr. Right.
As she lay in bed that night, Sheila analyzed the way she slept. She had a big bed, but she forced herself to sleep on only half of it. She even rolled up some blankets and laid them down the middle of the bed, from the head to the foot, to prevent herself from taking up too much space.
Next, she considered how much of her blankets she was using. Definitely more than half. So she pulled the half of the blanket she shouldn’t be using and tucked it under the opposite side of the bed. Then she weighted it down with some old books to prevent her from pulling more than her share of the blanket to her side of the bed. She found it hard to sleep, but she knew she would get used to it. And it would all be worth it if it could mean she would avoid driving away the man of her dreams.
To be continued…