I married my husband 3 years ago, after his painful divorce. Everything was fine until a month ago, when he called me by his ex-wife’s name. I corrected him. It kept happening, so I warned him. Nothing worked. The next time he said it, I didn’t react. I just smiled, turned around, and walked into the kitchen.
That night, I slept in the guest room. He didn’t follow. He didn’t even knock.
It wasn’t the name that hurt the most—it was how easily it rolled off his tongue. As if I was some background character in a movie he thought he’d already seen.
His ex-wife’s name? Miriam.
My name? Lara.
We don’t look alike. We don’t talk alike. I’m soft-spoken, more patient. Miriam was fire—he’d told me that many times. Fierce. Loud. Demanding. “You’re the peace I never had,” he once whispered to me, just before we got married. Now, it felt like he was chasing the storm again.
For the first few weeks after the name mix-up began, I made excuses. Maybe work was stressing him. Maybe it was just a slip. I even Googled things like psychological name confusion in marriage. But deep down, I knew what I was really doing—I was looking for reasons to stay.
He never apologized, not truly. He’d say things like, “You know I didn’t mean it,” or “You’re being dramatic.” That last one stung. So I stopped correcting him. I just watched.
Watched how his eyes sometimes glazed over when he thought I wasn’t looking. How he’d space out during dinner. How he never asked about my day anymore.
So I started keeping a journal. Every time he called me Miriam, I wrote down the date, the time, what we were doing. I wasn’t collecting evidence to throw at him—I just needed to make sense of it all. Needed to understand when I stopped being Lara in his eyes.
Then one Sunday, while I was folding laundry, I found a necklace tucked in the back of his drawer. It had a small, engraved pendant: “M—You’ll always be my forever.”
I just sat on the bed, holding it in my hand. It wasn’t new. It was worn, slightly scratched. Probably something he meant to give her but never did. Or maybe he had, and she gave it back. Either way, he kept it.
That night, I didn’t sleep. I laid awake, staring at the ceiling fan, wondering what part of me wasn’t enough. I wasn’t angry. I was tired.
The next morning, I made pancakes. His favorite—blueberry with a touch of cinnamon. He ate them without a word. I wanted him to say something. To look at me and see me. Instead, he kissed my cheek and mumbled, “Thanks, Miriam.”