A story.

I think nobody knows how it started. They say that no partnership is ever equal, especially when one (or both) has dreams and ambitions separate from the other.

How awful, though. One morning he recounted a long anecdote about somebody eyeing his promotion at the end of the month, and not once, not for a second, did he realise that she kept her face hidden behind the newspaper. Not because she was reading it, but because she couldn't let the tears show. She kept saying, "Hmm," and "Really?" at really interesting points in his narrative, a habit born of years of listening on autopilot, and he did not notice even once the inflection in her voice.

What was more awful? That lately he does not even notice that she falls asleep in a second, sometimes too quickly. That she reaches out for a book the moment he sails into the bedroom, that sometimes she's holding the book upside down in what could have been a really funny situation had it not been for the tremble in her hands. That she does the dishes with increased violence each day, that she has less and less to say to him as each week passes on the calender.

He has his grievances, too. But he says not a word.

He does not notice. She does not see a thing. Love blinds.