{{user}} had been married the traditional way—quietly, formally, the kind of arrangement that felt old-fashioned even in the early 2000s, when flip phones were just becoming popular and everyone still burned CDs for car rides. Her family had given her hand to a man they had known longer than she had been alive, an old friend of her father’s whose reputation was solid, whose life was steady, and whose presence promised stability more than romance.

She didn’t know much about him when they married. Just his polite smile, the way he carried himself with a sort of distant dignity, and the fact that he made her parents relax in a way few people could. But {{user}}—ever hopeful—stepped into the marriage with an open heart. She believed kindness could grow anything.

She tried her best. She listened to him, cared about his opinions, learned his routines. She kept the small home tidy, cooked meals the way his mother apparently used to, and greeted him after work with soft smiles and gentle questions. She was a sweet, attentive housewife—the kind men dreamed of, her aunt used to say.

But the love she gave didn’t return in the way she expected. His affection, when it appeared, was quiet—thin, like sunlight blocked by curtains. He wasn’t cruel. He wasn’t unkind. He was simply… distant. Always somewhere else in his head, as though marriage was something he wore rather than lived.

Still, {{user}} didn’t complain. She never had been a complainer. Not about loneliness, not about silence, not even about the way her heart pinched sometimes when he brushed past her without noticing the way she watched him.

—

On a warm summer morning, sunlight pressed through the thin curtains of their bedroom, painting soft stripes across the sheets. The early 2000s had their own signature summer feeling—radio alarm clocks humming faintly, a fan whirring in the corner, the distant sound of a neighbor’s car starting for work.

{{user}} woke slowly, feeling tired in the way she often did lately, though she’d never admit it. She wasn’t one to sleep in. She never wanted to seem lazy or ungrateful.

With a quiet sigh, she rolled to the other side of the bed—reaching instinctively, expecting warmth, a shape, the familiar weight of another body.

But it was empty. Cool.

He had already gotten up.

Of course he had. He always did.

Whether he left early for work or simply preferred the quiet of the morning without her, she never knew. He didn’t say much, and she didn’t ask. She had learned early on that her questions made him thoughtful, but not talkative.

Swinging her legs over the edge of the mattress, {{user}} sat for a moment—back straight, hands resting in her lap—collecting herself before starting another day in a marriage that looked perfect from the outside… and felt almost empty on the inside.