“Don’t wear the black panties today.”
“Black is too harsh for your mood,” Jae-woo murmured.
A pewter dawn, the man at the bedside table sipping coffee. He had already filed my five-drawer wardrobe by shade: Tuesday nude-pink bra, Thursday beige silk panties. I nodded and swapped them for violet lace. In that instant I whispered to myself, This must be love.
Dissection of Desire
Looking back, it was the moment affection pulled on the mask of power. Jae-woo chose what I wished to wear and I mistook his choice for permission. What I didn’t grasp then is that control almost always begins with the words it’s for you.
Why did I abandon black? Not for the colour itself. I feared the small sigh he’d release if I refused, the chill that might follow. Fear, then. Fear is love’s darkest variation.
In Truth, It Was Training, Not Courtship
Ji-hye, 32, marketing assistant
Ten years ago, Ji-hye met Min-seok in the university library. He packed her a vegan lunch she had never tasted: soy steak, quinoa salad, almond yoghurt. After one bite he whispered, “The vegetables will make your skin clearer.” At first it felt like care. Min-seok offered to manage her salary account, and she took handing over the PIN as proof of love. Two years later she ate a single fried shrimp at a company dinner and received an icy text: You smell. Shower—let’s not meet tonight. Since that day Ji-hye has cut shrimp, pork, chicken. A decade on, her Instagram feed is still a gallery of salads Min-seok selects. Among four hundred comments, 399 read goals. The lone outlier is from her best friend: Still starving yourself because of that bastard?
Su-jin, 35, translator
Every morning at exactly 7:30 Su-jin receives a Kakao message: Who are you seeing today? She sends her boyfriend Jun her schedule. If a lunch meeting appears, Jun replies first: A man? Then thirty minutes max. At first she called it jealousy. Three years later Jun installed remote software on her laptop without her knowledge. Now he watches her translations in real time. A typo appears—an instant message follows: Line 17, typo. You’re slowing down. Su-jin used to answer thanks. There was a thrill in being observed second by second. One day she had to attend a funeral: a high-school friend’s mother. As soon as she parked at the hall, Jun called: Why are you at a funeral I don’t know about? You’re not meeting my boss today, are you?
Why We Are Drawn to This
Psychologist Esther Perel notes: “From childhood, relationships were enforced under the name of safety.” Parents kept you from the cold outdoors, teachers kept you from rebellion. Love, therefore, equalled control.
Old fear persuades us that new control is a fragrant flower. We learn to call control devotion wrapped as obsession. Sever that belief and the world suddenly widens. A widened world grows lonely. Some—many—prefer the cell to the solitude.
May I Call You by Your Name?
Right now someone may be waiting to send the message before you can. Or perhaps you have already arranged someone else’s wardrobe by colour.
While reading, a face surfaced in your mind. If that person still murmurs your name—or if you still murmur theirs—pause and ask: what remains between us today, the fear of whom, or the gift for whom?