05/13/2025
Title: “The Empty Vase”
Angel had been married for eight years. She wore her ring like armor—polished, shining, but heavy. To everyone else, she had a good man. Corey worked hard, came home every night, paid the bills, and never raised his voice. On paper, he was perfect.
But love doesn’t live on paper.
In the beginning, it was beautiful. Long talks that stretched past midnight. Music playing while they danced in the kitchen. He used to tell her she was magic. That her laugh healed things in him. But somewhere between bills, kids, and life… Corey stopped seeing her.
The little things faded first. No more compliments. No more curiosity about her day. The way his phone seemed more interesting than her face at dinner. And when she tried to speak on it, to say “I feel alone even when you’re here,” Corey would shrug and say, “You’re overreacting.”
So Angel shrank.
She started doubting herself—maybe she was too needy, too emotional. Maybe expecting more was asking too much. But she missed being wanted. Not just physically. Emotionally. Spiritually.
Then she met Shawn.
He didn’t do anything dramatic. He just… listened. Asked real questions. Noticed when she changed her hair. Laughed at her jokes. Looked her in the eyes like she mattered. With him, she felt alive again—not for being a wife or a mother, but for being Angel.
At first, it was just conversation. Then it became more. The kind of “more” you don’t plan but feel deep in your chest. The kind that fills empty spaces you forgot you had.
Yes, it turned physical. But the real affair started long before the touch.
It started the day Angel realized she felt more seen by a stranger than by the man who promised forever.
She knew it was wrong. Every time she walked back into her home, guilt followed her like a shadow. But here’s the truth nobody talks about:
Sometimes women don’t cheat for pleasure. They cheat for presence.
For attention.
For a piece of themselves they lost trying to hold a relationship together alone.
For proof that they’re still beautiful, still needed, still there.
Eventually, Angel told Corey the truth. Not because she was caught, but because lying felt like living behind a wall with no doors. Corey was shocked—not just by the betrayal, but by the quiet unraveling he never noticed.
They didn’t survive it. Not because Angel cheated, but because Corey checked out a long time ago—and she had been trying to keep the light on for both of them.
⸻
The Twist?
Angel didn’t leave Corey for Shawn.
She left to remember who she was before the silence.
And in that stillness, she learned that sometimes women don’t cheat because they’re looking for someone else…
They cheat because they’re trying to find themselves again—
In a love that forgot how to look at them.