The Politeness of Distance

The politeness of distance is how careful you've become with someone you used to be careless with. Every word measured. Every silence audited. Closeness used to be a place; now it's a performance. This is not the same as a fight. There has been no rupture. There has just been an accumulation of small choices not to risk anything, and the result is a relationship that is technically intact but quietly underground. Naming it is not the same as fixing it. But naming it is where fixing might start, if you want it to.