A Letter He May Never Receive - Bismillah

Bismillah What is wearing me down isn't one big fight or a hard season that will pass. It's the slow, everyday feeling of being invisible to the one person who was supposed to know me best. It's realizing bit by bit that the hurt I carry either goes unseen or has become something you step around without ever touching. In Islam, marriage is called sakan - a place of tranquility where the soul can rest. But there is no rest in being ignored. There is no peace in being tolerated instead of cherished. What's destroying me isn't anger but silence. Not cruelty but neglect. Not hatred but the absence of warmth where love should live. I don't know which truth is heavier: that you genuinely don't see how your distance wounds me, or that you do see and simply choose not to respond. Either way, I'm starving in a marriage meant to nourish. Affection isn't a luxury. Romance isn't weakness. Desire isn't shameful to outgrow. These are part of the amanah - the trust - a husband holds toward his wife. The Prophet (SAW) showed tenderness, playfulness, and attention. Love wasn't withheld to keep authority; it was given to cultivate mercy. Without that mercy something essential hollows out. I feel myself shrinking in a bond that should let me expand. When I cry from somewhere so deep I can no longer hold it in, and you ask why I'm upset and tell me I shouldn't cry - tears aren't confusion. They are clarity. They are grief finding a voice. They're my body saying what my heart has tried to say for years: something sacred is missing, and it's costing me myself. Do you know how lonely it is to be falling apart in front of your own husband and still feel misunderstood? To open up and realize you're speaking a language no one wants to learn? We move through days like people sharing space, not like spouses sharing a life. We coordinate, we function, we coexist. But we don't ache for one another. We don't reach instinctively. We don't linger. Love isn't mere presence - it's inclination. It's being drawn. I don't feel chosen. I feel tolerated. I feel useful, not cherished. As if my worth is in what I maintain rather than who I am. And what hurts most isn't the labor but that you can watch me struggle and only help when I'm already breaking. Help after silence feels like damage control, not partnership. I don't want to be rescued after I bleed. I want to be met before I'm wounded. I am not kissed - not casually, not tenderly, not instinctively. And I must say this honestly, even if it scares me: if this absence is who you truly are, then you do not love me in the way a husband ought to love his wife. You don't long for me. Ten years shouldn't feel this cold, this forced, this missing softness. Love doesn't age into emptiness - it deepens, or it fractures. Some days the urge to leave isn't anger, it's survival. Staying here strips my confidence away bit by bit. I feel myself fading, carrying the weight of someone who no longer believes she matters. So I adapt. I become quieter, easier, less expressive. I smooth my edges to exist beside you without causing discomfort. I fake contentment because the alternative feels unbearable. Inside, I'm staring into eyes that don't desire me, trying to convince myself love can survive without intimacy. It can't. I'm tired of pretending. I've never felt more unattractive - not because of looks, but because of how unwanted I feel. You married a woman you don't reach for, don't crave, don't pursue. I ask myself shameful questions: Did I fail you? Did I dishonor myself? Did my patience mean nothing? You lived freely before, and now I'm supposed to accept the absence of intimacy as maturity? Why bind me to deprivation when I could have been loved fully elsewhere? Why take me from a future where I was chosen with certainty, not obligation? This isn't the marriage I pictured. Quality time reduced to a scheduled day. A body beside me at night that feels emotionally far away. That's not companionship; that's proximity without connection. I don't feel like a team. I don't feel united. I barely feel married. This ring - this silent symbol - reminds me daily of how little urgency there is to meet even my simplest needs. What binds us feels transactional: papers, responsibilities, logistics. I entered something I didn't fully understand, and now I see clearly. We don't dream together. We don't build together. Even small moments carry tension. You have a vision that doesn't place me at its center. I feel like an interruption in your life, not a partner within it. I feel in my bones that you never wanted a future with me that included growth, children, or shared becoming. Was this marriage just a box to check? Living inside that truth is devastating. I chose you again and again. I turned from others because my love for you consumed me. I saw nothing beyond you. Now that love erodes - not because I want it to, but because I'm finally allowing myself to see what I once refused to accept. He cares for you, but he does not love you. That sentence echoes, and reality keeps proving it true. I am broken. Deeply sad. And ashamed - not of my needs, but that I silenced them so long. Islam doesn't ask a woman to erase herself to preserve a marriage. It doesn't sanctify neglect. Mercy, affection, and tenderness are duties, not favors. I deserve happiness. I deserve warmth. I deserve to be wanted. I deserve a future filled with gentleness, children, and arms that pull me close without being asked. I deserve intimacy given freely, not treated as an inconvenience. I am not demanding. I am not excessive. I am not a burden. I am a woman who loved deeply, waited patiently, and hoped fiercely. And I know this now, even if it breaks me: I do not deserve this. One day I will live as if I truly believe that.