My husband had never been thoughtful with gifts. No flowers, no birthday surprises, not even a simple card. For years, I convinced myself that Simon simply wasn\u2019t romantic.<\/p>\n
I cooked his meals, washed his clothes, and kept our home running while he barely noticed. That Christmas, I hoped things might finally be different.<\/p>\n
But evening turned into night, and Simon still hadn\u2019t returned. When I called, he answered angrily.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m busy! Can\u2019t you leave me alone for once?\u201d<\/p>\n
The call ended before I could respond. I sat beside the Christmas tree, crying and wondering why I had accepted so little for so long.<\/p>\n
Then I noticed a small silver box beneath the branches. I had wrapped every present myself, and that box definitely hadn\u2019t been there earlier.<\/p>\n
Inside was a beautiful diamond necklace. For one brief second, my heart lifted\u2014until I saw the card.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo Claire. This Christmas is only the beginning of our new life.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Claire was Simon\u2019s assistant.<\/p>\n My hands went numb. I grabbed my coat and rushed outside, but Simon\u2019s car pulled into the driveway before I reached the gate.<\/p>\n He stepped out carrying two suitcases. Claire was sitting in the passenger seat.<\/p>\n Simon stared at the open box in my hand and whispered, \u201cYou weren\u2019t supposed to find that.\u201d<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t scream or beg. I simply handed him the necklace and said, \u201cThen take your gift\u2014and your lies\u2014with you.\u201d<\/p>\n That Christmas, I lost my marriage, but finally found my self-respect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My husband had never been thoughtful with gifts. No flowers, no birthday surprises, not even a simple card. For years, I convinced myself that Simon simply wasn\u2019t romantic. I cooked his meals, washed his clothes, and kept our home running while he barely noticed. That Christmas, I hoped things might finally be different. But evening …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8614,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8613"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8615,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8613\/revisions\/8615"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}