The Space Between

Raghav ignored the third message from Mira that morning. “We need to talk.” He told himself he’d respond after the product sprint ended. He didn’t.

He always excelled under pressure. As a product strategist in a bustling tech startup, he lived for chaos—pitching to investors, crafting timelines, fixing bugs at 2 a.m. But emotional connection? Especially with Mira? That was a system crash he never learned to debug.

When Mira cried or tried to reach him, a static wall rose in his chest. His mind whispered: flee. He never shouted, but his silences hit like slammed doors.

It started slowly—he worked late, traveled more, stayed vague. “Maybe next weekend,” he’d text when she asked to talk. Then vanish again. He convinced himself it wasn’t cruel. He was just busy.

Mira, once the vibrant woman who led dance workshops and solo-traveled across Europe, began to unravel. She stared blankly at her screen during meetings. She cried quietly in the shower. Her skin broke out. Her sleep grew erratic. Her confidence, once a blazing fire, now flickered like a forgotten candle.

She waited. Then waited some more. And then, she stopped.

After months of silence and cancelled conversations, she wrote: “Let’s begin the divorce paperwork. I can’t be the only one keeping us alive. I want to be with someone who actually chooses me.”

Raghav read it in the kitchen of his co-working space, surrounded by beeping microwaves and investor calls on speakerphones. The message didn’t enrage him. It emptied him.

He thought of the night Mira placed his hand over hers, a book on intimacy between them, her eyes trembling with hope. He had muttered something about being tired and rolled over.

He skipped his team’s dinner that night. Instead, he walked for hours through the city, trying to remember when he had last truly seen her—not just looked at her, but seen her.

Later that night, he messaged: “I know I’ve been distant for too long. I always wait until it’s burning. But this time, I want to change. The right way. I’m not rushing you. Just starting with honesty.”

Mira didn’t reply. She was at an art show, invited by an old friend who once told her she had a light around her. As music hummed low and paint bled across canvases, she remembered how alive she once felt in spaces like these.

Earlier that day, her mother had surprised her with lunch. Over coffee, she had gently asked, “Why do you always give so much to people who show up so little?” Mira didn’t answer. But the question settled in her ribs.

That night, Mira wrote in her journal: “Maybe my biggest mistake wasn’t loving him too much. Maybe it was forgetting how to love me.“

Raghav sat alone on the apartment balcony, rereading his own message. No reply. Just the distant sound of a neighbor’s TV. And for the first time, he didn’t wonder why Mira had pulled away. He asked, “Why did I make it so easy for her to go?“