After dinner my aunt found me on the back porch. She said she'd been sorry to hear about Lauren and asked whether I was taking care of myself. I told her I was doing better, and she said she remembered how excited we'd been at the engagement party. Then she told me that people could love one another and still discover they weren't capable of building a peaceful life together. I didn't ask what experiences had taught her that. I simply thanked her, and we stood in the evening air until someone called us inside for dessert.
I had once thought the success of a relationship could be measured by how few arguments a couple had. Lauren and I rarely shouted, at least not in the early years, and I had treated that as evidence that we were unusually compatible. What I hadn't understood was that avoiding a conflict could be different from resolving it. We sometimes kept the peace by postponing difficult questions until they no longer felt safe to ask. When the trip brought one of those questions into the open, our usual methods failed almost immediately.
I also recognized that my silence had not always meant strength. There were times when I'd become quiet because I needed a moment to choose my words, and that was reasonable. There were other times when I'd stopped talking because I already believed Lauren would dismiss me, and I wanted to avoid the humiliation of trying again. In the future I wanted to notice that distinction earlier. A relationship in which I constantly rehearsed what not to say wasn't one I should quietly endure until an argument finally made leaving unavoidable.
One night I wrote down the things I wanted from a partnership, not as a list of rules for some future woman to obey but as questions I would ask myself. Could I say I was uncomfortable without being mocked? Could the other person disagree and still recognize that my feelings were real? Would we talk directly when a conflict arose, or would we use friends and public posts to decide who was right? Could I extend the same consideration I expected, even when a partner's concern seemed inconvenient to me?
I included questions about my own behavior. Would I speak up early rather than saving quiet resentments? Would I avoid turning a preference into a universal moral rule? Would I be willing to listen when someone I loved believed I had hurt them, even if that wasn't my intention? Writing those questions helped me understand that I wasn't searching for a relationship without disagreements. I wanted one in which disagreements didn't automatically threaten respect.