The Wine Affair
A collective story about women and wine
Photo by Guilherme Caetano on Unsplash
On this inquiry
Early in January, I began a 30-day inquiry into my relationship with wine—my beliefs, habits, assumptions, and the quiet negotiations I noticed around it.
As that inquiry unfolded, I became aware of a collective voice. The stories I heard from women in a course I took. The buffering. The logistics. It can take an unspoken effort to maintain a relationship that appears benign.
I’m sharing this piece to gently name what often stays private, and to let women know they’re not alone in the questions they may be carrying. This isn’t a conclusion or a prescription. It’s an inquiry, shared as it unfolds.
It begins innocently, as most affairs do.
A glass poured at the end of the day.
A soft exhale.
A quiet signal that the work is over and someone has arrived to keep us company.
Wine is charming that way.
It doesn’t demand.
It invites.
It meets us where we are—tired, capable, accomplished, under-touched by adult connection that doesn’t require productivity or composure.
At first, it feels like ritual.
A reward.
A companion earned through endurance.
The glass waits patiently on the counter while dinner comes together.
It listens while we replay the day.
It smooths the edges of loneliness without asking us to name it.
And because it doesn’t bruise us right away, we trust it.
This is how the romance deepens.
Slowly, wine becomes more than an evening pleasure.
It becomes logistics.
We learn which liquor stores feel anonymous—and which don’t.
We rotate locations, casually, just in case.
We keep two bottles open.
We rinse empties carefully, drop them into public bins on morning walks, as if tidying up after a night that never officially happened.
We become very good at appearing normal.
Bright.
Engaged.
Capable.
We speak clearly on calls.
We show up to workouts.
We run and do yoga.
By all visible measures, we are fine.
And yet—an astonishing amount of energy is being spent maintaining the relationship.
Not drinking would take less effort than thinking about drinking.
The negotiations alone are exhausting.
Should we?
Shouldn’t we?
Just one.
Only tonight.
We deserve this.
We’ll stop tomorrow.
Wine promises calm.
But it requires management.
It asks for discretion—not because we are ashamed, but because we are protecting the intimacy of the affair.
This is between us and the glass.
No need to explain.
No need to disturb the illusion that this is still fully in our control.
During COVID, this relationship deepened for many of us.
Homes became offices.
Evenings stretched long and unstructured.
The line between soothing and celebrating blurred completely.
Wine stepped into the role of witness.
Of punctuation.
Of presence.
Wine filled the space where connection once lived.
And here is the quiet cost we rarely name:
not the hangover.
not the calories.
not even the sleep.
The cost is coherence.
The subtle fracture between what we know in our bodies and what our habits repeat.
The way one part of us seeks clarity while another negotiates against it.
The way aliveness, energy, and self-trust are deferred—one familiar choice at a time.
Wine doesn’t take everything.
It just takes enough.
Enough attention.
Enough vitality.
Enough honesty with ourselves.
It asks us to stay slightly less available to our own longing.
This is why the ending is so tender.
Not because wine is bad.
But because it was faithful.
It showed up.
It soothed.
It stayed.
And now something else is asking for that place.
Not discipline.
Not abstinence.
But presence.
The affair doesn’t end with drama.
It ends with a question:
What if we allow ourselves to feel exactly as we are?
What if we didn’t outsource companionship?
What if loneliness didn’t mean something was wrong?
This isn’t about quitting.
It’s about reclaiming the energy once spent managing a relationship that no longer loves us back.
And realizing—
the romance was never really with wine.
It was with the version of us who wanted to be held.
If this resonated somewhere between your heart and felt shame, you’re not alone here, and this may be where coherence begins.