The Game

A year ago, I came up with the idea of a game to spice up our marriage. I am usually terrible at such things, so my wife was intrigued on the spot. The game was about staging a scene, taking turns, where one of us pretended to break up with a believable excuse. “Just for fun,” I insisted, “no subtexts, no innuendos.” She guffawed at first, punching my arm and chest, and then we discussed the terms. We were in worn-out pajamas, sitting on the couch, our hair messy at the end of the day. “Come on, you love teasing me,” I said in a mischievous voice, looking at her almond-shaped hesitant eyes. Finally, she gave her blessing with a kiss on the cheek.

To be perfectly honest, the first few attempts were uninspiring as it turned out neither of us had a God-given talent for storytelling. The lack of complexity in our plots prevented us from fully immersing ourselves in the performance. Staying in character during the delivery, especially when the sole audience intermittently burst into laughter, was a true hardship. This was entirely different from pulling pranks or playing role-playing games because we had to adhere to the rules of drama, not comedy. Despite all that, we kept our commitment to the deal. At the end of the day, it was better than Netflix since, even in a primitive form, it generated a feeling of grounding instead of frivolity.

Then, one evening, Leyla took the game to another level.

We were having dinner when she yelled “Hey Google!” and startled me a little. Then she commanded the virtual assistant to play my favorite Sezen Aksu song. Slightly leaning back, I gave a tenuous smile. It was an attempt to feel like I was in control.

Now the music pervaded the room. She caught my wrist on the table, staring reluctantly into my eyes and staying silent. This speechless introduction allowed the ambiance to sink in with things fading into the background. Soon she released me and suddenly stood up, placing one hand on her waist and the other on her forehead as if she had just noticed something dreadful. There, lips still sealed, she began pacing around the room in her tight jeans and saggy t-shirt.

When the song neared its crescendo, “Mert,” she finally mumbled, “I believe I’m in love with him.” A narrow stream of tears flowed down her trembling lips. Sezen’s creamy soulful voice was now piercing my heart. “I am myself again,” she said as if she was discussing with herself. “He gave me back everything I lost in this marriage.”

The masterfully crafted pauses between every line stunned me. I was completely captivated by a rollercoaster of emotions, simultaneously thinking that she must have been taking acting classes. “We’re going away… We’re leaving you!” she cried, looking down at me with a cunning smile as I sat in the chair, almost unable to move.

It was the first time that one of us attached someone we both knew to the game – that is, Mert, our extremely helpful and indispensable neighbor. He had moved to the Netherlands a few years before us, therefore we always tapped into his well of experience during our adaptation process.

Now Leyla, mentioning him, made me entertain the thought of them having an affair for a long time, rendering me a blind idiot who could not see any of the signs. Scattered memories flooded my mind all at once. I tried to isolate instances when they were talking to each other rather intimately, sharing jokes that I could not understand without explanation, and exchanging flirtatious compliments.

I applauded reluctantly. She must have sensed my perplexity, as she always did. Yet, she said nothing about it and just resumed feeding on the cooled-down pasta.

After fifteen years of marriage, spanning three countries, five apartments, and six jobs altogether, it was still the quality I admired most about her: leaving me with raw feelings until I figured out what to do with them, and then patiently guiding me to unpack the second mess that I had made by figuring out the first one.

Several months later, on a bright winter Sunday, we went hiking. I was clad in all-black nylon, she wore pink and orange synthetics. The heavily treed park was only ten minutes away by bike and our backpacks were filled with sandwiches, muffins, and coffee. It was a simple reward for an extremely busy period for both of us. At that time we rarely played the game and each attempt was shallow and tedious like the Turkish soap operas that we hated to love.

We stopped for a break and perched under an old mossy pine with its resinous scent. It was the perfect time for me to set my belated revenge act in motion. “Sophie and I are having an affair,” I said, staring at the earth beneath my feet and my hands clasped tightly together.

“And she… she got pregnant. Unplanned, you know. And now I have to make a decision.” She was gazing at the bent branches. I put my hand on her knee. “I feel terrible but this must be the best decision for everyone.”

In response, Leyla was beaming: “I knew it!” She was referring to the first time she met Sophie, the junior front-end developer who joined our team recently. She had teased me all weekend, claiming that Sophie had feelings for me.

“Good for you,” Leyla said, squeezing my cheeks, “you’re replacing me with my goofy, nerdy and, of course, Dutch version.” The subtle resemblances I never noticed until she uttered unsettled me momentarily.

Then, with my exaggerated voice, I began rambling about how Sophie made me feel young and ambitious again and how she restored my washed-up manhood. Leyla only simpered, looking entertained. “I didn’t know I could still feel what I’ve been feeling,” I muttered, desperately seeking an expression of distaste on her face. Instead, she sprayed the coffee and muffin pieces in her mouth.

I should have taken the defeat but I didn’t. Maybe, retrospectively speaking, I couldn’t. Perhaps, a kind of urgency was driving me. There I poked, “I had no idea I wanted a child after all.”

At some point in our lives, we accepted that raising a kid was not our thing. But it was never a sealed decision and we had kept discussing it from time to time. Sometimes she brought a new scientific argument for how giving birth to a child increases the life expectancy for both parents and sometimes I sent her the Instagram reels of cute little girls talking adorably with an English accent.

In those instances, it would often be me who steered the conversation away from ending up in favor of making a baby, oftentimes with a clear declaration against being a father. From her giving up somehow, and not insisting, so far I had deduced that childlessness was our mutual agreement. But deep down, I must have sensed that if she were to marry another man, she would have had a baby.

Therefore, she looked at me under the pine tree and said, “I’ll take the house, then.” It wasn’t a waggish remark, I thought. “You can always be the baby’s peetmoeder, you know,” I quipped in an attempt to ease the tension. “Too late, I lost my appetite for kids,” she replied, rising to her feet. When I looked up, the sun was hiding behind her head, so I couldn’t see her face anymore. For the rest of the walk, we only talked about trivial things.

Despite its ups and downs, the right amount of playfulness did bring the anticipated zest to our marriage. Intimacy increased, and with it, we discovered our changing tastes in, well, everything. We dispelled the attitude that, after all those years, there was nothing more to learn about each other. I even started reading articles on relationships—the ones Leyla had shared with me long ago but I could never get past the second paragraphs. I was feeling that her view of me having an interesting personality had been restored to the early marriage levels.

However, it also introduced a darker element—a kind of hangover feeling after experiencing unexpectedly extreme pleasure like winning a lottery or eating a magic mushroom. With each act we endured, I sensed that she was slowly slipping away from my reach. As if the ultimate freedom in a relationship would render romantic ideals like commitment and fidelity completely futile. We were no longer tangled by years of shared nomadic experience but floating individually.

Yes, it was liberating but also it was like unlocking a new territory in a computer simulation where I had no idea what I needed to do.

We played the game on and off for more months, and the last time was at a house party to which we were invited by Leyla’s boss, Tom. I find aimless socializing with disorganized crowds rather annoying and arbitrary encounters almost always make me paralyzed. Luckily, Leyla has always been adaptable and easy.

That night, she was particularly charming, wearing an ice-blue dress against her tanned skin, literally glowing under the dim light. I wasn’t jealous, never have been, but a kind of delirium that gamblers would recognize when they go all-in and lose after a streak of wins was simmering through my veins.

Since most of the guests were strangers to us and since our small talk skills drastically diminished in the Dutch language, we just danced all night senselessly. It was purely sentimental, like swimming at night when you could only trust your instincts.

At that plasmatic moment, I wouldn’t dare to initiate an act, however, Leyla without hesitation descended into the trench by whispering: “This is our last dance, darling.” The tone of her voice, erotic yet depressive, caught me off-guard. Feeling extremely dizzy, I could only whisper back, “Does it have to end?”

To my astonishment, my eyes welled up. I briefly lost control over my body. She just didn’t mind. “What are we doing here?” she cried. The music wasn’t loud enough, so a few heads turned to us. “We came for a better life, for a reliable future… To reestablish, to spread our roots again. Now look at us! We’re playing this silly game… To what end?”

As her face tensed with sheer seriousness, the border between reality and fiction disappeared for a split second. Only, she didn’t use the safe word to quit the game so I assumed we were still playing. “It seems you’ve made up your mind,” I mumbled with an irrepressible worry.

Our foreheads were kissing each other. “I can’t be with you anymore,” she gushed, “I don’t want to waste my life with safe choices.” I just held her tight in silence, burying my nose in her neck. The scent radiating from her skin was reminiscent of something so assuring that I couldn’t have imagined it being finite. Then, the silence befell on us.

On our way back home, the intensity of the experience faded completely and we were cheerful again. When I asked her about the game, she said she had been enjoying it. “So who’s winning?” I asked from the passenger seat. “Of course, I am,” she laughed and pressed her right foot further on the gas pedal.

Last week, I planned a surprise vacation for our anniversary—a two-day escape from dullness really. Again, I rarely did such things, so Leyla was genuinely happy with the progress. We had fun together for one final time. On the plane, when we were returning home, I uttered the safe word and said, “Me and Sophie… it became real.”

She was befuddled, I could see it in her eyes. With playing the game, my observation skills were enhanced after all. “You were right. As always. Sophie indeed had feelings for me from the very beginning.”

We didn’t speak much until we arrived home. “When did it start?” Leyla inquired in the kitchen, pouring sparkling iced tea for both of us, “Before or after the game?”

“After,” I stuttered. She gave a condescending look. A kind of repulsion, I’d say. Then, she smiled, nodding her head, as if everything made sense all of a sudden, and shouted, mockingly, “You wanted to be the one who left, you coward!”

Rehearsals worked perfectly in the end, the separation was uneventful. I had familiarity with the feelings that emerged afterward. Only, I was and still am regretting that I’ve lost my best friend.