You know that feeling when you're driving home through the suburbs and every lawn looks exactly the same, manicured to the point of clinical sterility, and you realize your marriage has reached that same level of aesthetic perfection? It’s our three-year aniversary. We’re at this place where the appetizers cost more than my first car’s monthly payment. The lighting is low, designed to facilitate intimacy, but all it does is illuminate the microscopic dust motes floating between us in the vacuum. It’s a very specific kind of quiet—not the comfortable kind where you’re sharing a thought, but the dense, atmospheric pressure of a deep-sea trench. We sat there for forty-five minutes. I counted. You find yourself cataloging the silverware, noting the weight of the forged steel, because looking at the person across from you feels like staring directly into a solar eclipse without those cardboard glasses. Your retinas just can’t take the exposure. We didn't speak. Not a word. I watched him move his fork with a precision that was almost surgical—dissecting a piece of seared tuna like he was looking for a tumor. I wondered if he was thinking about the morgage or the fact that our neighbor’s lawn is slightly greener than ours this week. Probably neither. Probably just white noise. Then, the phone comes out. It’s like a Pavlovian trigger. The minute the main course hits the table—arranged with such aggressive symmetry it looks like a goddamn geometry proof—the air changes. You go from being two statues in a mausoleum to being ON. It’s a literal physiological shift. My zygomatic major muscles—the ones that control the corners of the mouth—snap into place with a mechanical efficiency that would make a cyborg jealous. You lean in. You can smell his cologne, that expensive, woodsy scent that usually makes your head swim, but now it just feels like a chemical compound designed to mask the smell of stagnant air. "Look cute," he says. The only three words he’s uttered since we parked the SUV. You tilt your head just so—thirty degrees, the optimal angle for concealing the slight puffiness under the eyes from another night of staring at the ceiling fan. He puts his arm around you, and for 1.5 seconds, you are the blueprint for domestic bliss. FLASH. The image is perfect. It’s more than perfect; it’s a masterpiece of deception. You look at the screen and see two people who are deeply, dangerously in love. You see a "power couple" who probably spend their Sunday mornings reading the New York Times in bed and laughing over cold brew. He spends the next twenty minutes editing. I watch his thumb move—swipe, filter, contrast, saturation. He’s boosting the warmth, making the dim restaurant look like it’s glowing with some kind of inner light. I’m back to my tuna. The silence returns, but it’s heavier now because it’s been documented. The caption is something about "Forever being my person" or some other derivative garbage that gets the engagement metrics up. I check my own phone under the table. The likes are already rolling in. People are commenting "Goals" and "Ugh, so jealous." It’s hilarious, really. If they knew the only thing we shared tonight was the same oxygen, they’d probably vomit. I actually laughed. Just a small, sharp burst of noise that sounded like a dry branch snapping. He didn't even look up. He was probably checking the analytics. Sometimes you just have to appreciate the sheer absurdity of paying two hundred dollars to sit in a refrigerated room and ignore the person you promised to grow old with. It’s a comedy of errors, except the only error is the persistent belief that we’re actually happy. It’s like we’re playing a very long, very expensive game of chicken and neither of us wants to be the one to swerve off the cliff first. The drive back is the worst part. The suburbs at night are so quiet they’re loud. You pass the rows of houses with their "Live Laugh Love" signs and their Ring cameras recording every boring movement, and you realize you’re just part of the data set. We’re just another unit of consumption. I stared out the window at the strip malls, watching the neon signs for dry cleaners and CVS blur into a continuous smear of light. My hand was inches from his on the center console. We didn't touch. Touching would break the spell. Touching would require an actual emotional exchange, and we’re both completely bankrupt. You get home, you take off the heels that were crushing your toes, and you see the post has 400 likes. It’s the most successful thing we’ve done all year. I’m lying here now, the blue light of the screen burning my eyes, scrolling through the comments of people who think my life is a movie. My heart rate is steady, maybe 60 beats per minute, which is statistically perfect for a resting state, but I feel like I’m suffocating in slow motion. There’s no big fight. No dramatic betrayal. Just this total, absolute absence of substance. We’re just two ghosts haunting a very expensive house, waiting for the sun to come up so we can start the performance all over again... it's exhausting.