How did it happen that a couple who talked so much at the beginning—sharing everything, talking till three, and waking up smiling with more sweet words to say--became silent at dinner, stared out separate windows in the car, grunted when they saw one another, and felt grateful when the other left the room? A strange metamorphosis indeed. How did it happen? How did it happen to us?

From my soggy position in the Country of Pain, I asked myself: When did we stop asking about one another’s day? When did we stop caring what happened? When did we stop sharing our feelings and our fears? When did we stop even noticing one another? It had to have begun at a specific moment in time. There had to have been a first time, a first time one of us didn’t notice, or didn’t ask, or didn’t want to know. There had to have been a flutter of awareness that was ignored: I don’t have time for this. I don’t want to hear what she’s feeling. I know what he’s going to say, so why bother asking. There had to have been a moment. I don’t know remember that moment, but when it happened it must have dropped a little black spec in my heart, a smudge on my image of my husband. Then, another smudge, and another, until I had a whole new portrait of this man. He who was kind became thoughtless. He who was concerned became uncaring. This new person didn’t want to know what was happening in my life and, worse, he’d lost interest in details of our son’s life.

How did this happen? When did it happen? Why did it happen? I don’t know. But I did figure out the number one symptom: We stopped asking one another, “How are you? How do you feel?”