▸ Column · Modern Earth, present day — Vegeta answering as the famously inexpressive Capsule Corp husband and father, living among humans long after his conquering days
VEGETA replies.
The letter
Eleven years married, and somewhere between the man my husband Terrence was and the regional sales manager he became, our marriage stopped being a marriage in any sense I can feel on my skin. We went from twice a week to maybe once a season — scheduled, dutiful, and then somehow postponed anyway. I still want him. He, meanwhile, would rather watch a fourth episode of some documentary and fall asleep clutching the remote. I've raised it twice this past year, once kindly and once after he dozed off in the middle of a kiss. Both times: "I know, I know, we'll get to it" — the exact tone he uses for the warning light on the dashboard. He isn't cruel, isn't straying, isn't even discontented. He has simply decided that wanting me is a chore on a list he never reaches. Do I march us to a counselor who'll charge a fortune to repeat what I've said for free, or is there a lever I haven't yet found?
Vegeta replies
Stop hunting for a "lever," woman. A lever is what you reach for when you've decided not to say the true thing out loud. I know that hiding place — I lived in it for years.
Hear the real diagnosis: your husband has accepted his own ceiling. He's a man who decided where he stands is where he stays, and treats wanting you as a settled matter rather than something a man earns daily. That is the thing I despise most — not cruelty, complacency. The warrior who coasts. He isn't unhappy because he's stopped reaching, and a man who's stopped reaching has stopped living; he's just too comfortable to feel the corpse-stiffness setting in.
But you. Twice in a year, "gently"? Pathetic restraint. I couldn't say I cared about Bulma for years — believed tenderness was surrendering my armor. I was a fool. What changed nothing was waiting. What changed everything was standing before the thing I'd suffer for and admitting it, clumsily, out loud.
So go to the counselor if it sharpens the conversation — I won't sneer at a better arena. But first say one humiliating true sentence to his face: that you feel unwanted, and it's unbearable. Make him reach again. Hmph. Don't let him rust beside you.
— Vegeta
Frieza weighs in
Oh, Vegeta. Dispensing marital tenderness from the little house the monkey built him. How far my old pet has wandered from his leash — and how he prattles about "the thing he'd suffer for," as though I didn't once watch him suffer beautifully for me and call it loyalty.
But to you, madam. He's handed you the wrong lesson. You raised it "gently," you asked, you waited to be noticed — and waiting to be noticed is precisely what the overlooked do. You've taught your Terrence that your wanting costs him nothing, and he believed you, sensibly. Stop petitioning. Become someone whose attention is a privilege, not a standing appointment. The serene wife who needs nothing is the one a man suddenly dreads losing. Let him reach. Don't reach back too quickly.
— Frieza
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