"How do you feel about getting married?" I let the question slip as I set down my glass. While the last foam ring dissolved against the bottom, Hye-won’s eyelids trembled. She inhaled sharply, lips curling almost imperceptibly. After a pause, she turned away; the shrimp chip in her hand crumbled and fell. I breathed in the soy-sauce scent she hates and met her gaze as it blurred—clear, adamant: marriage is a relic, a cage for freedom, the obsession of anxious men.
An untraceable breath, and the wish to burrow deeper.
Three years ago, a wine bar in Seongsu-dong. I met Hye-won for the first time. Skin like pale glass, she tilted her wine without flinching at the flame of my offered lighter. She was unlike any woman I had known.
Six months in, one dawn at her place, I sat on the edge of the bed stroking her hair. Morning light slid between her brows, and I thought: I want to imprison this moment forever. That was when the word marriage began to ripen in my mind.
But Hye-won stayed the same. After one year, two years, she repeated: “Aren’t we fine like this? No interference, only when we need each other—”
What she left unsaid wasn’t fear that I might not be her forever. The opposite: fear that I would be.
Between the instinct to possess and the emptiness of eternity.
Did I truly want forever? Or did I simply want to bind Hye-won so she could never leave? Marriage began as an institution of ownership—a Roman iron cage. One man’s method of monopolizing one woman. Even now, little has changed. Marriage is the sturdiest fence two people can build.
Yes, divorce exists, yet the fantasy of “marriage = eternity” refuses to fade. Why? Because we are afraid—of the deepest fear: that the one we love might vanish. Marriage is the final shield against that terror. One sheet of paper, one ring, the incantation before two hundred guests: for the rest of our lives. Without it, we cannot endure the dread that we might simply evaporate.
What she hated was my anxiety.
Hye-won’s eyes flashed sharp. She sighed, pinched the bridge of her nose, then opened them—cold.
Her words struck bone. I hadn’t been loving her. I hadn’t been loving her laughter, her scent, even the helplessness she occasionally showed. I had only wanted her beside me. Whether she was happy, whether she loved me, was irrelevant. Just stay.
In the end we parted. Hye-won flew to Europe; I cried at the airport. She said, “Now I’ll erase you. You erase me too.”
But I couldn’t. Her absence dug deeper, sharper. What I had wanted wasn’t eternity but something more lethal hidden behind the word: the monstrous desire to own her.
So what is it I truly want?
Tonight I drink alone again. Same bar, same seat. She is gone. In the window my reflection searches for something already lost.
When I spoke of marriage, what did I seek? Love that guards the other? Or a crystallized obsession, a terror of loss? The answer is not simple.
Perhaps I live unable to distinguish eternity from possession. Thus the word marriage becomes, for some, a beautiful vow; for others, a cage.
Right now her name lights up my phone: “Hye-won (Europe).” I never deleted it. My finger trembles—call or not? The screen goes black. In the dark glass a man meets my eyes. His gaze says it isn’t over. I still want to own her.
So: do I love someone? Or do I simply pray they never leave?