Tom always seemed like the guy everyone loved. He had that magnetic energy\u2014always the one bringing cupcakes to the office, remembering your birthday, making everyone laugh with that booming, infectious chuckle. Falling in love with him was effortless. Being loved by him, in the beginning, felt like a dream.<\/p>\n
He\u2019d show up with my favorite flowers \u201cjust because.\u201d Slip sweet notes into my work bag. Friends called him a unicorn. My sister once asked, half-joking, \u201cDid you find him in a romance novel?\u201d And I believed I\u2019d hit the jackpot.<\/p>\n
But the thing about jackpots? They never come without a cost.<\/p>\n
Ten years into our marriage, I started realizing that the Tom I lived with wasn\u2019t the same man the world adored. It wasn\u2019t a dramatic shift\u2014no thunderclap of change. Just a slow erosion, like waves grinding down stone. The mask slipped, and what lived underneath it was someone unrecognizable<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tom always seemed like the guy everyone loved. He had that magnetic energy\u2014always the one bringing cupcakes to the office, remembering your birthday, making everyone laugh with… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55947,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n