There was no answer, no principled answer, only the unexamined assumption that his needs were real and mine were optional, that he was a person whose suffering warranted relief and I was a resource whose suffering was simply the cost of my function.

And the moment I rejected that assumption, the moment I decided that my exhaustion deserved a solution exactly as much as his did, everything followed.

If his tiredness could be solved by spending our money, so could mine.

I was not overspending.

I was correcting an accounting error six months in the making, in which one partner’s needs had been valued at full price and the other’s had been valued at nothing.

Chapter 6 — He Stopped Dead in the Doorway