There is a bitter lesson in that, and Marisol turned it over for a long time afterward, because it inverts everything we are taught about love.

We are taught that love is safe, that the people who love us most are the ones who will treat us best, that patience and generosity and a forgiving nature will be met, over time, with the same in return.

And in a healthy relationship, they are.

But there is a darker dynamic that operates in relationships that are not healthy, and it works in exactly the opposite direction: the more forgiving you are, the more you will be asked to forgive; the more you absorb, the more you will be handed to absorb; the less you demand, the less you will be given.

Because a person avoiding conflict — and Dorian, at bottom, was a person organized entirely around avoiding conflict — does a constant, unconscious calculation about where to route the friction of daily life, and that calculation always flows toward the point of least resistance.