For fifteen years, I lived what looked like a picture-perfect married life. But the truth? We had never once shared a bed the way most couples do. And the day I overheard my husband speaking with his best friend, everything I thought I knew unraveled.
People saw us as an ideal match. We worked long hours at reputable companies. We left for the office together every morning, returned home at dusk, and appeared side by side at every community event. Our apartment was always tidy, our Sunday routines predictable: potted plants watered, shoes lined up, dinner ordered from the same corner takeout.
But for all the neatness on the outside, inside our ninth-floor apartment, a silence lived between us — one deeper than words. We had been married for fifteen years, yet not once had we been intimate. Not a single night. Not even on our wedding night.
No one suspected a thing. Not the maid, not the doorman, not the delivery boys. They assumed we were like everyone else. But behind the doors of our home, our two pillows never touched.
The Life We Pretended to Live
Our bedroom was always open, no locks, no barriers. But it may as well have had a wall running down the middle of the bed. He slept on the right, I on the left. His bedside lamp cast a cold white glow. Mine was warm, soft, and shielded with a cloth cover.
On stormy nights, when the rain rattled against the tin roof of our balcony, I curled up facing the wall, and so did he — in the opposite direction.
Still, I kept up the act.
I washed his shirts with care. I aligned his toothbrush just so. I celebrated his birthdays and watched him light incense on the anniversary of my mother’s death. And when relatives asked why we hadn’t had children yet, he would offer the same practiced line:
“Work has been demanding. We’ll see after the next project.”
His answer always bought us time. But deep inside, I was fading. The flame inside me, once hopeful, had long gone dim.
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