When Love Is a One-Way Street

In this intimate, slow-burning account, the author tells the story of Sahil, a man who gave everything to a marriage that gave him nothing in return.

- Syed Majid Gilani

They weren't always silent. There were days when the house echoed with the sound of children running down the hallway, their laughter spilling into the corners.

But when the noise faded, what remained was silence. The kind that presses against your chest. Sahil lived inside that silence for years.

He married Muskaan with hope in his heart. He had seen her once, and something about her stayed with him. A softness in her eyes, maybe. He thought it was love. But Muskaan didn't see him the same way.

Her family had chosen Sahil for her, and she walked into the marriage without a word of protest, but also without a trace of warmth.

From the beginning, her distance wasn't hard to miss. She answered his questions in half-sentences, never met his gaze for too long, never asked how his day had gone.

It was a slow, silent pushing away. But enough to leave Sahil standing alone, even when they sat beside each other.

"She never said it outright,” Sahil once told a friend. “But her silence said everything.”

Still, he stayed. Because love, for him, wasn't conditional. He believed in staying through the cold days, in waiting for spring. He made tea for her every morning, fixed the loose hinge on her cupboard, remembered the dates she forgot. He believed that one day, something would melt in her.