10/26/2025
Title: When the Therapist Forgot How to Love
Dr. Mira Anand sat across from her 3 p.m. patient, a man in his late thirties, eyes tired but sincere, voice halting.
“I don’t know what happened,” he said. “We were so in love. Married seven years, two kids. Then… it’s like we’re roommates who share a mortgage and manage logistics. No kisses. No laughs. Just survival.”
Mira nodded gently. Her face was trained to show empathy, not reflection. But inside?
A mirror was shattering.
Because his story…
was hers.
Chapter One: The Therapist
Dr. Mira Anand had spent a decade mastering the art of emotional navigation. CBT. Attachment theory. Gottman principles. Trauma therapy.
She had helped hundreds. Maybe thousands.
But not herself.
She had married her college love — Arjun, brilliant, kind, ambitious.
Two children, a comfortable home, photos that looked like warmth.
But over the years, life happened.
Schedules overtook spontaneity.
Fatigue replaced flirtation.
They still loved each other, maybe.
But they no longer knew how.
Love had become… muted.
Like a melody forgotten.
Chapter Two: The Mirror in the Room
Her patient, Sameer, continued.
“She says I don’t see her anymore. I say she doesn’t touch me. We both feel unloved, unseen, unchosen.”
Mira’s throat tightened.
“She says I don’t see her anymore.”
That line.
Verbatim. From her last fight with Arjun.
She had always believed therapists should be neutral.
That their wounds should be stitched up, buried, sealed.
But today, her wound was bleeding.
How could she help Sameer when she had failed at the very thing he was trying to save?
Her notes were blank. Her posture frozen.
And then, he said something unexpected.
“Do you think... love just dies? Or is it murdered by the lives we build around it?”
She blinked.
That question.
It wasn’t a patient’s question.
It was hers.
Chapter Three: Unpacking the Ghosts
They sat in silence. A sacred one.
Then Mira spoke, not as a therapist, but as a person.
“I think... love dies when we stop being curious about each other.
When routine replaces ritual.
When we assume we’ve arrived instead of realizing love is a practice.”
Sameer looked at her. “So how do we practice again?”
She hesitated.
“I don’t know,” she whispered.
And for the first time, she saw a tear escape her own eye —
on her side of the room.
---
Chapter Four: A Mutual Session
Sameer leaned forward. “Can I tell you what I think?”
She nodded.
“I think we’re all raised with a broken map of love.
We think it’s supposed to feel magical forever.
That if it doesn’t sparkle, it’s dead.
But nobody taught us that love is like soil — it only grows if you water it... every single day.
And we forget, because we’re distracted by survival.”
Mira felt the breath leave her.
He was right.
Nobody taught her either.
She had inherited love from movies, fairy tales, dopamine rushes.
Nobody taught her about the middle —
the space where dishes and diapers coexist with desire.
Chapter Five: Relearning Love
She asked Sameer, “What if we both start practicing love like a daily ritual?
Even if it’s not reciprocated immediately.
Even if it feels awkward.
Just… practice. Not for outcome. But to remember.”
He nodded.
“For both of us?” he asked.
“For both of us,” she said.
That evening, she texted Arjun:
“I miss us. Not the early us. But the us that could still be born — if we dare to try.”
He responded:
“Where do we start?”
And for the first time in a long time,
Dr. Mira Anand didn’t feel like a fraud.
She felt like a woman learning love.
For the first time… properly.
End Note:
Some therapy sessions are not about healing the patient.
They’re about remembering the truths we forgot in ourselves.
And sometimes, the patient becomes the teacher.
Because healing doesn’t always move in one direction.
It’s a loop.
Like love itself.
