'Cause You Have To | One Shot

Marriage.

What does marriage really look like? How does it feel to tie your life with someone else's forever? Masaya ba talaga 'yung maramdaman mong sigurado ka sa taong pinili mong makasama habangbuhay? Totoo bang kapag ikinasal ang dalawang taong nagmamahalan, panghabambuhay na rin ang lahat?

Iyan ang mga tanong sa puso't isipan ng batang Tristine Rue Valmorida when she used to believe in forever. She was raised in a warm and loving household, she witnessed the kind of love most people dreamed of-until the day her parents' once beautiful marriage began to fall apart. Doon naisip ng batang siya na baka kahit gaano pa kalalim ang pagmamahal, wala talagang panghabambuhay.

But when a guy named Vaughn Maxime Alvarez came into her life, her heart started to believe again. Vaughn loved her in all the ways she needed-and even in the ways she didn't know she deserved. He made her believe in the kind of love she thought only existed in stories. At sa huli, ikinasal sila-isang pangarap niya na naging totoo.

For years, she believed she was living her dream.

But a decade into their marriage, something changed. Vaughn became distant, cold, silent-like a stranger wearing the face of the man she once knew. And just like that, she was reliving the pain of her childhood.

The questions she used to ask as a child were no longer the same.

Is marriage only beautiful in the beginning? Or was she simply unlucky to have the same fate as her parents?

Do you hold on to love for the sake of marriage?

Or do you love someone... 'cause you have to?