Some relationships don’t end. They simply never begin.
Anna and Michael decide early… without ever saying it… that they will be careful with each other. No declarations. No risk. Just closeness that feels safe enough to keep and fragile enough not to name. Years pass inside that decision. Habits form. Lives intertwine quietly. Other people come and go.
From the outside, it looks like stability. From the inside, it begins to cost them.
What We Decided Not to Be is a romance novel about restraint mistaken for maturity, about the damage that accumulates when desire is managed instead of faced. Told through alternating perspectives, it traces the slow erosion of a bond built on what is never asked for… and never refused.
This is a story about love that stays unnamed. About the choices that feel sensible in the moment. And about what remains when you realize safety was never neutral.
John Berry was born in Rhodesia. He lived there for six years and then emigrated to Durban, South Africa. He went to Marist Brothers College. After matriculation, he did national service as a paratrooper and fought in the Angolan war in 1975. He traveled extensively, lived in England for two years, then emigrated to Brisbane, Australia. He spends his time researching and writing fiction stories.