SCENES FROM A RELATINGSHIT

Nobody warns you that you can be married and still feel like the loneliest person on earth. Not because anyone cheated. Not because you're throwing plates at each other or shagging your yoga teacher. But because somewhere between the school drop-offs and mortgage stress and binge-watching series you both secretly hate, you just… stopped showing up. You didn't leave. But you're not there, either. Neither of you are. She tells you about her day and you realise halfway through her story you've heard none of it. He asks how you're doing and you're so unused to the question you don't know how to answer. You sit beside each other every night and somehow never actually meet. Now you're two ghosts folding laundry. Marital loneliness isn't loud. It's not a soap opera. It's "What time's the dentist?" ... It's "We need eggs." ... "What do you want to watch ? " It's lying next to someone every night, six inches apart, feeling like you're shouting across a canyon that doesn't echo back. You remember when you used to fuck in the kitchen and laugh mid-argument and actually look at each other across a room. Now the most intense eye contact you get is when you're both telepathically blaming each other for the fucking bins. It's not that you don't love them. It's that you've both forgotten how to see each other. Connection got replaced with coordination. Intimacy got replaced with logistics. And presence? That fucker packed up and left years ago without saying goodbye. Here's something they don't put on the wedding invitations. Being married to someone who touches your shoulder in the kitchen and you flinch because it feels foreign. Who says "I love you" on autopilot while scrolling TikTok. Who's in the same room, but hasn't met your soul in months. And nobody talks about this. Because you've got the house, the kids, the matching towels, the smiling photos. So you tell yourself this is what it's supposed to look like. Butterflies are for teenagers. Passion fades. Everyone knows that. You knew that. Meanwhile you're lonelier than you were in that shitty one-bedroom you couldn't wait to leave. Fuck that. This isn't love growing old gracefully. This is love being put on mute and fed Weet-Bix. Love doesn't die from drama. It dies from numbness. From quiet days with no truth in them. From the slow, silent rot of not saying the thing that actually needs saying. You stop asking the real questions. You stop reaching. You perform "fine." You perform "not that bothered." And then one day you look at each other across the dinner table and realise you've been managing each other's calendars and calling it intimacy. I did this. For years. Came home, ate dinner, watched television, went to bed. Told myself that was love. Turns out it was just two people occupying the same square footage and working the bills. I was there every night and absent every night. Showed up for dinner, checked out before dessert. Did it so consistently I stopped noticing. That's not a relationship. That's a residency. Love doesn't get murdered. It gets starved. Slowly, quietly, with everyone's best manners intact and nobody willing to name the thing that's dying on the table between them. If you're still waking up next to someone who can't see you anymore , or who you stopped bothering to see , don't wait for the explosion. There won't be one. The quiet version is cleaner. No evidence. No scene. Just two people who used to know each other, running out the clock. Say the thing. The one you've been swallowing so long you've started to think it doesn't exist anymore. The one that feels too risky, too raw, too late. It's probably not too late. But it will be. Most relationships don't end when somebody leaves. They end years earlier. We just slowly stop showing up, then one day look across the table at a stranger we share a mortgage with and wonder what the fuck happened. Invisible absence. That's the one that does it. Not drama. Disappearance. Being in the same house was never the same as being in the same life. And somewhere along the way we forgot that. So, resurrect the connection. Or admit it’s gone. But whatever you do, Don’t keep living next to someone while dying inside. That's not love. That's just very expensive loneliness. In the end we weren't undone by passion. We were undone by Tuesday. By Wednesday. By the quiet agreement to stop trying. © Zen Prem 2026