“From wrist to ankle, she had been bound so tightly”
Joon-su muttered over a late-night glass of whiskey on the sofa. The couple everyone called “nice and normal” had just dredged up a memory from last summer. At 3 a.m., while Jia lay in deep sleep, the hem of her flimsy nightgown had slipped aside. That was when he saw them: livid red thread-marks laced up to the inside of her wrists, faint bruises running down her ribs. It looked as though someone had trussed her up, then released the knots. For a moment Joon-su could not breathe.
These marks… I didn’t put them there.
The anatomy of desire
From that night on, Joon-su was adrift. Why did those bruises suffocate him? The mind of a man who believed himself decent began to smolder with the noon-bright suspicion that his wife might have spent a violent night with someone else. The blaze soon twisted into a scorching fantasy.
If only I had watched her—bound, writhing, weeping—without her knowing.
The more he pictured a rival, the more vividly he summoned Jia’s trembling face, until disgust gave way to an alien, icy thrill. A sentiment beyond logic. Yet the mutant offspring of selfishness and possessiveness had already unfolded its dark-blue petals.
Why did she etch pain into her skin?
Weeks later, Joon-su happened upon a notebook at the very bottom of Jia’s drawer. The first page was dated just after their third anniversary. A single sentence stared back:
Today I cradled another wound. Only then does Joon-su relax.
He stared blankly. As he turned the pages, Jia’s handwriting grew fainter.
If he clings to me because of my wounds, I must make more. While I hide bruises and scars from someone else, I let him burrow deeper into my body. If my pain is the thermometer of our love, I must never cool or scorch.
Suddenly he remembered the winter past. Jia had come home with a bruise on her cheek; he had clutched her frantically. Eyes closed, she had whispered:
“Protect me.”
That was the first time he’d felt entirely claimed by her. So the bruise hadn’t come from me, after all.
Every marital bedroom hides a covert highlighter
Dr. Kang Yu-jin, who runs a therapy practice in Cheongdam-dong, says:
“Marriage is a contract and a cohabitation of guilt. One exposes a wound, the other soothes it. Yet the soothing can carve the wound deeper.”
Many couples she sees repeat the pattern of manufacturing wounds. The husband dreads traces of his wife’s infidelity, yet without those traces feels no pull toward her. The wife remembers how he responded to her pain, and learns that only pain confirms love.
If love is pain, we have no choice but to keep hurting one another.
How far can you bear to look at the wound?
Joon-su slid the notebook back where he had found it. Lying beside his sleeping wife, he whispered:
“Stop now.”
Yet the next morning he discovered a fresh mark: a vivid bruise on her shoulder. He brushed it lightly with his finger and felt cold blood rush to his limbs—a fierce tremor wholly unrelated to morality or betrayal.
Do I want to erase her wounds, or am I terrified that if they vanish, so will our love?
At the foot of the bed, Joon-su sat haggard, still without an answer. Perhaps every night we all lull ourselves to sleep between dread and desire. If you wish to untie the hidden knot, you must first admit the knot was yours all along.