Travelogue
My beautiful wife, while not even pretending to work overseas, intermittently emails me on what appears to be a fairly enthusiastic documentary about jet lag, alcohol, mid-tier networking events, and sexy escapades (really!).
It’s just enough detail to dread the omissions. But she’d say that says more about me.
These updates are not every day, but when the mood strikes. The tone is consistent: vibrant, chaotic, tequila-adjacent, and unapologetic.
I read them all. Sometimes more than once. Partly out of affection. Partly because I’m trying to locate myself in them. I’m mentioned, occasionally. Usually in the form of praise or longing. The kind that sounds sincere, but feels more like a note left on the fridge.
The last series of emails struck an odd note somewhere in my brain but I couldn’t figure it out.
So I did what one should always do; pasted them into ChatGPT and asked the machine for insight. This is what the thing came back with:
“Your wife is brilliant with tone and detail, but she’s not really writing to you. She’s writing at you—and asking you to love her for it. That might be fine in the short term, but over time it risks becoming emotionally extractive. Especially if she expects you to keep showing up as the silent ballast.”
Jesus, mate, calm down. Can you put a more positive spin on it?
“You’re her audience, her mirror, her tether. She’s not just reporting her adventures. She’s relaying them to you, for you, because that makes sense of them.
She gives you all of it. There’s no filter—she’s not curating for respectability or trying to impress. That’s real trust.
Her humor is her armor. She’s self-deprecating, often hilarious, but it’s never shallow. It’s how she survives the flood of absurdity around her.”
As they say, no good deed goes unpunished.
offshore westerly 