Breaking Points

We don’t simply inflict our lives on others; rather, we learn, over time, to coordinate, to synchronize, to co-deliberate. We grow together, bit by bit, by way of agreement and experience: the result is something too real to be annulled by one party simply deciding to opt out.

The extremes of total bondage and total freedom strike me as being on the wrong scale for human relationships. They are appropriate for creatures much larger or smaller than us. We humans need to do our living, and our moralizing, in the middle. Often a relationship that doesn’t work in one form might work in another form, a renegotiated one. And e

I am not saying you can never break up or get divorced, but rather that all is not fair when it comes to these endings; you cannot simply cut people off; you are not free to leave at any time. If your life is entwined with someone else’s, then a new arrangement between the two of you must be the product of an agreement you can both live with. Also,

I had my reasons, of course. As I say, she is crazy. I am, too, but in a very different way. The immense effort it took for me to spend a whole day with her and ensure that it was “perfect”—that I did nothing to offend, upset, or bother her—proved to me that we just didn’t work. And I thought: When a relationship does not work, each party has the