The Juan That Got Away

After two years of marriage, I finally got a clear understanding of my husband. I still recall asking him during our courtship, "What's your favorite dish?" He replied, "The ones my mom makes."

I was deeply impressed by such a warm and filial answer back then. After his mother, Emily Ryan, came to stay, I finally grasped the implication behind those five words.

What he wanted from our marriage wasn't to spend a lifetime with me. Instead, he intended to use my money and live a cozy life with his mother for the rest of their lives.

I was willful when I was a little kid, and this trait was even more pronounced when it came to love.

As an only daughter from Mist Harbor City, I was firmly convinced that love was simply love. I didn't buy into what my mom said about families being well-matched in social and economic status, nor did I acknowledge what my dad proposed about having the same aspirations. I only trusted my feelings.

When my husband paid his first visit to our home, my parents exchanged meaningful glances and shook their heads slightly. Because on that day, he was constantly breaking off to answer his mother's calls, and the two of them were chatting away in a dialect that no one else could make sense of.

My dad quietly told me that city girls shouldn't marry an ugly duckling man.

At the time, I told my dad not to judge people with prejudice. I had believed that he was my prince charming and that he would love me, safeguard me and show consideration for me all my life. Therefore, even if he didn't have any money for the wedding, nor a car, nor a house, nor a job, I was determined to marry him.

Unexpectedly, being an ugly duckling was just the tip of the iceberg. He turned out to be a mama's boy as well. Guided by his mother, he married me without spending a dime and got a wife for free.

I was in a relationship with Kyle for three years and we've been married for two years. At present, I've been pregnant for more than four months. We got to know each other at university, which was a story from wearing school uniforms to donning wedding gowns.

Whenever this story was mentioned, the most common comment I heard was "romantic."

But when I looked within myself and posed the question, were we actually romantic? The answer was that perhaps we had had some romantic moments.

However, romance was really delicate and couldn't bear the slightest bit of trouble.

The romance between Kyle and me eventually faded away in the midst of trivial life. And it all started when I added his name to the property deed.

I had only met Emily once, at our wedding.

I could still recall that on the day we got married, she went up on the stage wearing a red floral cotton-padded coat and started her speech like this. "I'm so happy today. I'm extremely happy. I've got a great son. He did a good job in school. He was the only one in our village to be admitted to a good university. After graduating, he worked hard alone in the city, got a stable job and brought me a city daughter-in-law. I'm proud, I'm very proud."

All of her remarks were centered on how wonderful her son was, without even a single word about me.

Due to this incident, neither my family nor I had a favorable impression of her. My parents even brought old issues to the fore again, urging me to stay vigilant after marriage to avoid being exploited without realizing it.

However, throughout the two years of our married life, I hadn't noticed the slightest sign that Kyle was different from how he was when we were in a relationship.