When I Was Too Tired to Reach and He Didn’t Know How to Find Me 

by Rebecca Townsend with Andy by my side

There was a season when I’d come home and stand in the kitchen like a ghost.

Not angry. Not distant on purpose. Just… emptied out.

It started during the hardest health season of my life. I’d been knocked down by Long COVID, and even when I looked fine on the outside, I wasn’t okay. This wasn’t like the time I fractured my pelvis in high school and spent three months in a hospital bed. It wasn’t like the disc replacement surgery that took me all the way to Germany. Even the stroke I had earlier this year hasn’t left the kind of mark Long COVID did.

Because with this, no one could really see it.

Not at first.

My early providers dismissed it. My symptoms were vague and shifting.

I couldn’t prove how sick I was, and that made it even lonelier.

It was an insidiously isolating experience - physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

The Engineer would ask how my day was, and I’d answer with something like,

“Fine. Just tired.”

But “tired” didn’t really cover it.

It wasn’t the kind of tired a nap could fix. It was the kind of tired that seeps into your bones when you’ve overpromised all day. When you’ve used your voice, your empathy, your energy for everyone except the person you love. When you walk through the door, and the one who knows you best barely gets what’s left of you.

And what’s worse: you know it’s happening.

You feel the space widening.

You still love them, but there’s a quiet drift.

A slow fade you don’t know how to stop.

We weren’t fighting.

We weren’t disconnected in any dramatic way.

We just kept missing the moments where we used to meet.

Our rhythm had always been a little offbeat - a classic pursuer and withdrawer.

Not always healthy, but it was ours.

The heartbeat of our connection had its quirks. A little arrhythmic, but familiar.

I was the one who reached. He was the one who stayed quiet.

It worked until I got too sick to keep reaching.

And when I went still, he didn’t know how to move toward me.

That’s when the real silence began.

The kind that stretches across a room and settles into the day-to-day.

Eventually, that silence grew so wide, we didn’t live in the same house.

Not because of anger. Not because of betrayal.

But because we had forgotten how to feel close.

This isn’t that story.

This is the one just before it - when we were still trying to hold the thread.

Those five minutes in the morning before the world intruded.

The three minutes after dinner where we’d linger by the sink.

The little pauses that once said “I see you. I’m with you.”

Gone.

Replaced by notifications, fatigue, logistics, and that low-grade hum of emotional survival.

The truth?

Sometimes five minutes felt like too much to give.

Even to the person I loved most.

We talk a lot about the big problems in relationships.

Betrayal. Avoidance. Blowouts.

But no one really warns you about the ones that go quiet.

The ones that sound like:

“Just one more email.”

“I need to decompress first.”

“I’ll check in later.”

The ones that slowly replace connection with cohabitation.

That was us for a while.

Fractures, but not shattered.

Lost, but not hopeless.

Not broken. Not fine. Just fragile.

And slowly becoming roommates who loved each other.

What helped wasn’t a dramatic fix.

It was choosing five minutes on purpose.

Five minutes to sit beside him instead of opposite.

Five minutes to let our phones stay in the other room.

Five minutes to touch his hand without needing to explain why I hadn’t in days.

And when I couldn’t give five to him, I gave it to myself first.

A pause in the car before coming inside.

A hand on my chest.

A moment to stop being the therapist. The fixer. The capable one.

Just a woman who wanted to come home to her life.

These days, we still miss each other sometimes.

The world still pulls at us.

But now we have tiny rituals that tether us back.

Nothing fancy. Just five-minute habits that whisper,

We’re still us.

If this sounds like where you are - still in love, but living on fumes - I made something for you.

It’s not therapy.

It’s not a long course.

It’s five minutes of real connection, over and over, until you remember how to feel close again.

✨ 5-Minute Habits for a Closer Relationship

5-Minute Habits (Mini-Course)

Before you go, ask yourself:

• What does five minutes of connection look like in your world?
  

• Where could it fit - in the kitchen, the hallway, the pause before bed?
  

• Can you begin again - not by changing everything, but by noticing what matters?
  
  

You don’t need to fix it all.

You just need to show up for five.

That’s where everything starts to change.

And a gentle but important note:

If you’re in a relationship where there is physical harm, emotional abuse, coercion, or persistent fear, please know that this kind of work is not about staying at all costs.

Love can’t grow where safety is absent.

Sometimes the bravest thing we can do is to name what’s not working and seek wise, professional support.

There is no shame in protecting your heart, your story, or your future.

You deserve safety, always.