LOVE LISTENS TO DETAILS.

 

Logan noticed the change first in the apartment. It began with the subtle SHIFT OF SILENCE during dinner. Where they once shared stories about their days, now there was only the clatter of forks and the hum of the refrigerator. Soon, this silence stretched into evenings, each of them glued to their separate screens, a glowing wall of pixels standing between them and conversation.

It was easier to scroll than to talk. For a while, Logan tried. He'd ask Amira about her work, her friends, her art, and so on. Her answers, once so rich with detail and emotion, became shorter and dry. "It was fine", she'd say, or, " Nothing new". Logan began to let his attempts drop.

The next thing to fade was EMPATHY. During one of their few conversations, Amira mentioned her struggles with a new project. Logan, rather than listen, immediately jumped in with a list of solutions. "You just need to be more organized", he advised. Amira's shoulders sagged. She was not looking for a fix; she just wanted to be heard. But Logan was so focused on winning the "problem-solving" expert that he killed the opportunity for a genuine reconnection.

Then came the COMPARISONS. A friend was celebrating a new contract, and in a moment of frustration, Amira said, "I wish I had a partner who celebrated my successes like Mark does for Sarah". Those words stung Logan. He immediately fired back, bringing up a past mistake of Sarah. " Yeah, well, remember that trip to the coast? You complained the whole time about the hotel I picked".

The final nail in the coffin was A TINY DIGITAL BETRAYAL. A new colleague at Amira's office started texting her jokes. It began innocently, a harmless distraction from a stressful day. But soon the texts became more personal and frequent. This colleague gave listening ear to Amira and offered her reassurance in a way that Logan was not doing. Amira found herself smiling at her phone, her heart fluttering. She was receiving the emotional attention she was starved for at home. She began hiding the texts, reading and deleting them. The secrecy was toxic and it festered.

Well, sadly, one night, Logan found the message trail on a shared tablet. There was no explicit wrongdoing, but the intimacy and emotional affair in their conversations was undeniably overwhelming. He confronted AmIra. She didn't deny it. "He just... listens", she said quietly.

The fight that followed was not a battle to be won. They picked at old wounds, hurled resentments and disgorged every unspoken criticism. As the storm raged, they both realized how many little wrong things they had done and left to grow into a monster.

In the end, they packed their boxes.

There was no winner or loser, but two people who had let their relationship die of a thousand small cuts.

Authored by:

Asset Rainhard Imoh

NBD/SP/AG/IV/PT/145