Just someone I used to know?: Charles Assisi writes on fading intimacy

When friends, or ex-lovers, drift apart, it may leave no bruises. But it’s still hard to reconcile, isn’t it, the quiet loss of a bond that once meant so much?

Nothing went wrong. We merely charted separate courses. Over time, we went from inseparable to, well, separated.

That feels like the strangest part. There was no fight, no betrayal; nothing, in fact, to mark a before and after. Just a slow drift. The kind that creeps up on one quietly.

I used to think intimacy needed a reason to break. That such a break always came with a story. Now I know it sometimes simply dissolves. Without malice or warning,