Maybe, in ways he didn’t realize, I reminded him too much of his parents or ex-wife or the woman he once mentioned who had hurt him deeply in graduate school. “I made a decision never to go through anything like that again,” he had said early in our relationship. I’d asked him to explain more, but he didn’t want to talk about it, and I, colluding with his avoidance, didn’t push it. Wendell, though, has been asking me to look at the ways we avoided each other by hiding behind romance and banter and plans for our future. And now I’m in pain and creating my own suffering—and my therapist is
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