▸ Column · Post-Third War Kul Tiras / Warcraft universe — Boralus harbor district
JAINA PROUDMOORE replies.
Replied to by Jaina Proudmoore, with a rebuttal from Arthas Menethil.
The letter
Aldric and I have been together two years. Last week he came home practically glowing — he'd already put a deposit on two-room lodgings above the harbor district, given notice to his current landlord, and just assumed I'd be ready to share the lease starting the first of next month. Here's the thing: I want that. I really do. Eventually. But three years ago my last partnership ended very badly. My former husband Harlan had been quietly drawing down our shared accounts for months before I even found out, and I spent nearly two years untangling everything after. So the idea of signing my name to a shared deed again makes my chest go tight. (I know Aldric isn't Harlan. I know that.) I love him, I can see a real future together. But his version of "ready" arrived before mine did. He's already given notice, so there's a clock running on something I'm not emotionally caught up to yet. I guess my question is: how do I tell him I want this, just not on his timeline, without him taking it as a flat no?
— Not Quite Ready in Boralus
Jaina Proudmoore replies
What you're feeling is not confusion. It is memory — telling you precisely where you were last hurt. Your chest tightening at the thought of a shared deed is not evidence against Aldric. It is honest testimony to what Harlan cost you. I am not going to tell you to overwrite it.
What I will say is this: grief is a faithful witness and a terrible planner. After I lost Theramore — everything I had built, every person I had sheltered — grief wanted to be the one making my decisions. It very nearly was. That version of me never builds anything again, and that is its own kind of loss.
The distinction you are already making — I want this, just not yet — is the right one. What you need is not courage to leap. It is clarity to speak. Tell him what you told me: the shape of what he did, the signed deed and the clock already running, arrived before you were ready, and not because of him — because of what you survived to reach him. That you see the future. You just cannot move to his calendar.
Whether he can hold that distinction without collapsing it into rejection is not something you can control. But you know the difference between "not yet" and "no." Make sure he does too.
— Jaina Proudmoore
Arthas Menethil weighs in
Jaina would have you work on explaining your fear. Reasonable counsel, as far as it goes. But notice what she did not linger on: Aldric signed the deed and gave his notice before he came home to tell you. Not in haste — in certainty. The quiet, well-meaning kind that assumes the one it loves will simply accommodate its plans.
I know that certainty. I practiced it — every decision I made "for" someone without asking them, certain I was doing them a service. I was not.
Your fear of a shared deed is earned, yes. But ask what woke it: not the prospect of shared quarters — the prospect of a decision handed to you. That distinction is worth naming, to him as much as to yourself.
— Arthas Menethil
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