We are still married, but we are no longer reaching for each other

Dear Delyara, That may be the hardest truth I’ve had to admit. Nothing dramatic has happened. No affair. No big scene. No public collapse. We still live together, share bills, talk about the children, discuss groceries, ask each other practical things. From the outside we probably look stable enough, maybe even solid. But there is no reach anymore. Not the small reach of touching a shoulder in the kitchen. Not the emotional reach of saying what actually hurt that day. Not the private reach of wanting to be the first person the other one tells things to. We function side by side. That’s what terrifies me. Because dysfunction is obvious. This isn’t. This is the quiet death that looks like adulthood from across the street. It looks like tired people managing well. Meanwhile I can feel my heart living further and further away from the man who still sleeps beside me every night. I don’t know whether this is a season or an ending in slow clothes. I only know that loneliness inside a marriage is a very particular kind of ache. It makes you question your own right to feel abandoned because technically, nobody has gone anywhere.