“I still can’t take off my underwear. The baby’s grown so big inside me…”
I let the words fall like excuses and sat on the edge of our bed. He was already shrugging into his coat. The sentence he tossed over his shoulder before the door clicked shut coiled around my heart like a chain.
“Give me a little time. I might be late tonight.”
A little time? While I waited, my belly swelled larger with the child, and my desire shriveled smaller, abandoned.
The Door That Closed Behind Him
Seven months pregnant. The white maternity briefs lying on the duvet looked less like lingerie than an oversized diaper. For the first time, I felt terror.
If I give birth, the most erotic thing in this room will be these white briefs.
Why now? Why, at the moment I am least a woman, does he become most a man and leave?
The question slithered through my mind like a snake. That night, the answer arrived in a single KakaoTalk ping: Jieun.
“Thanks again today :)”
I Still Haven’t Undressed
I stood in front of the bathroom mirror wearing only briefs. My belly was too large for me to lift my arms and peel them off. Each time I tugged the elastic, I feared the cord attaching me to the child would snap. Then the word taboo surfaced.
Taboo was never simply what you must not do. It was what you can no longer do.
- Desiring a pregnant wife was not taboo.
- Discovering you cannot desire her—that was the taboo.
So he left. Before he had even undressed me, he had already found the place where he could undress someone else.
Why Her Waist Stayed Slim
Her name was Jieun. Thirty-two, divorced. The personal trainer at the gym my husband praised. She was my inverse: my body ballooned with life; hers streamlined after having laid life down.
I scrolled his Google searches:
- “sex refusal during pregnancy”
- “negative feelings toward pregnant wife”
- “taboo with trainer”
The final query iced my fingertips:
“failure rate of ovulation suppression during pregnancy”
Second Story: The Secret Waiting Room
In a Seoul obstetrics clinic, Suji—twenty-nine, thirty-six weeks along—confided in her doctor.
“My husband started seeing my close friend’s older sister. Strange, isn’t it? At the moment I should feel most womanly—carrying his child—I feel least like a woman.”
The doctor handed her a prescription. “Hormones shift dramatically; desire can change.”
Suji tore it up. She knew the truth. It wasn’t the change of her body. The weight of the life inside her had grown so heavy it crushed every other longing.
Forbidden Fruit, or the Anatomy of Desire
Why do we keep listening? Why trace the path of a husband who fled a pregnant wife? It is not mere adultery. It is a story of desire that failed to honor its taboo.
We project ourselves into that desire. The wife becomes taboo not as wife, but as life tethered by an umbilical cord. The taboo twists into jealousy, then self-loathing.
“I’ve carried this baby seven months, and already my husband seems to have forgotten me.”
Those words belong to all of us. Whenever we lose someone, we feel the same: I still haven’t even taken off my underwear. Whatever the reason for the loss, we confront the self that was not yet ready.
Last Question: Is Your Waist Still Slim?
What are you carrying right now—life, desire, or the self you lost? And whose shadow disappears behind your closing door? Someone who could not endure the weight of what you hold?
I still haven’t taken off my underwear.
Could you walk away even after seeing that?