I'm going to write this article carefully, because I'm writing it for an audience that will include people currently in this situation, and I don't want to be either glib or melodramatic about something that, in my experience, breaks people slowly and quietly.
I want to describe a specific moment that happens to me, and to a lot of people I know, at the start of every social event I attend.
I want to tell you about a woman I'll call S, because that wasn't her name, and a relationship that lasted about three years in my early thirties.
My phone buzzes on a Tuesday morning at 9:14. It's my mother. I know it's my mother before I look, because she calls roughly at that time on Tuesdays, after she's done her morning errands and before she starts thinking about lunch.
I want to tell you about a Tuesday night, about three years ago, when a woman I'd been seeing texted me at 11:47 p.m.
There's a particular kind of person at every dinner party. They smile at the right beats.
There's a particular argument that has played out in millions of households, in roughly the same form, for as long as people have been living together.
There's a moment most people I know over sixty have described to me in some form, even if they wouldn't have used these exact words.
