He did not speak for me.

That is what a real partner does, and it is what thirty-two years in my family had never once shown me was possible: someone strong enough to protect me who understood that the deepest protection was not to fight in my place, but to make it safe for me to fight for myself.

He gave me the one thing I had never had — a person at my back — and then he trusted me to do the rest.

And I did.