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My Husband Thought I Left Him Because He Didn’t Fix The Printer

That wasn’t the reason, but it was the final straw.

kasey sparks
Heart Affairs
Published in
5 min readJan 7, 2024

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a well-connected couple — quite the opposite of my marriage | author’s photo

“Are you leaving me because I didn’t fix the printer?”

The absurdity of my then-husband’s question made me want to laugh and cry at the same time. Did he think I’d walk out on my marriage simply because he didn’t help me figure out why our printer stopped working?

And yet the answer to his question wasn’t a resounding no either. The problem with our printer and his unwillingness to help me solve it was just the final straw.

Technology often frustrates me.

For some reason, our printer stopped printing. I’d click the print button and wait a few seconds for the I’m on it whirring sound from the printer to kick in but instead, all I got were crickets and error messages. Argh. Why wasn’t it working?

What’s wrong with the printer?

I’m not a techie, so I asked my then-husband who worked in IT to help. But he didn’t seem to understand how much this mattered to me, so it wasn’t high on his list of things to do. In fact, it didn’t appear to be on his radar screen at all.

All I got from both him and the printer were crickets.

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kasey sparks
kasey sparks

Written by kasey sparks

making mistakes · gathering lessons · sparking curiosity · wrangling words & fiddling with titles since 2017

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