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Mira, 37, a software engineer thriving in her career, had been consulting me for over two years on her professional decisions. In one session, almost in passing, she said she wanted to end her marriage. Though my guidance had centered on her career, this didn’t come as a shock. I had sensed it for a while — a restlessness beneath her ambition, a quiet hollowness she never named.
When I asked her when things had actually changed, she didn’t point to a fight or a betrayal. She went quiet, then said: “I think it was the evening I got promoted and didn’t bother telling him.” This was years before our conversation.
This is what most of us misunderstand about marriages. The papers are signed in a lawyer’s office, but the marriage usually ends much earlier—in a kitchen, on an ordinary Tuesday, the day one person stops trying to be understood.
It rarely ends in noise. It ends in small withdrawals. The day you stop sharing your good news. The day he stops asking why, you’ve gone quiet. The night you both begin sleeping, face the wall. Each moment is too small to name, but they accumulate.
And so, in the middle of an ordinary week, a quiet question surfaces: When did we stop talking about anything that actually mattered? For many, a second follows: Am I at peace here, or have I simply gotten used to the distance?
These questions are uncomfortable, which is exactly why we bury them under routine. But they deserve to be asked.
It is not the fighting that ends a marriage. Fighting, at least, is engagement. It is the silence afterwards — when conflict stops feeling worth the effort — that signals the real distance. By the time someone asks whether they should leave, a part of them has often left, quietly, years earlier.
We stay, of course, for reasons that are real. The children. The families. The years invested. These are reasons to remain — but they are not, on their own, the same as connection.
Still, as it’s often said, it’s not over till it’s over. What slips away in small, unnoticed moments can return the same way — gently, one small gesture at a time. It begins with the ordinary things we abandon: asking how their day truly went and staying for the answer, sharing the small news again, sitting in the same room a little longer. Mira did not separate. Once she saw when the distance had begun, she also saw that the affection underneath had not vanished. It had only gone unattended.
Perhaps the question is not- “whether it’s over?” It is: when did I stop paying attention — and what is one small way I could begin again today?
Disclaimer: The opinions and views expressed in this article/column are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of South Asian Herald.
