By the time Kavya realized how much of herself lived inside the marriage, it was already too late to step out easily.

Her days revolved around the family with a precision that bordered on devotion. She knew the children’s moods before they spoke. She sensed Aditya’s stress before he named it. The marriage was not something she participated in; it was something she inhabited.

When she thought of herself, she thought first of them.

This had once felt like strength.

But now, the same attentiveness turned restless. Aditya no longer responded the way he used to. He listened, yes, but without warmth. His presence felt provisional, as if he were passing through rooms that no longer belonged to him.

Kavya compensated by narrowing her focus. She asked for clarity. She wanted plans. Certainty. She needed to know where she stood.

"You’re so far away lately," she said one evening, standing in the doorway of his study. The children were asleep. The house was quiet.

Aditya closed his laptop slowly. He had been staring at the screen without reading. "I’m here," he said.

She shook her head. "Not really."

The simplicity of her statement irritated him. He felt accused without understanding the charge.

"What do you want me to say?" he asked.

"I want to understand you," she replied. Her voice was calm, but there was urgency beneath it.

He turned away, rubbing his temples. Understanding felt impossible. His thoughts moved in fragments, refusing to align. Kavya’s insistence felt like pressure against an already fractured interior.

The more she leaned in, the more he retreated.

He began to guard his inner life carefully. Thoughts that once would have been spoken aloud now remained unexpressed. He took refuge in abstraction, in work, in the quiet isolation of his own mind.

Sometimes, standing by the window late at night, he felt as though he were observing his life from the outside. The marriage, the children, the responsibilities—they were all real, yet strangely distant.

Kavya sensed this withdrawal acutely. The man she loved seemed to contain worlds she could no longer access. This frightened her.

She responded by clinging, though she would never have used that word. She framed her need as concern, as care, as commitment. She reminded him of shared obligations, of how much depended on them staying aligned.

Aditya felt himself shrinking under the weight of her expectations. He could not articulate the suffocation without sounding cruel. So he said little.

Silence became his refuge.

The imbalance settled into place.

Kavya lived entirely within the marriage, her sense of self bound to its stability. Aditya encompassed the marriage but was not contained by it. His inner life extended beyond its boundaries, fragmented and restless.

One night, as he watched Kavya sleep, her face softened by exhaustion, a sharp realization cut through him.

He felt outside.

The thought terrified him.