On a Sunday in March he made pancakes.

And I sat opposite a man who had spent a year and a half telling my best friend about my medical results, and I said “these are good, actually,” about the pancakes, and I meant it.

What that taught me — and I have not been able to unlearn it — is that a marriage does not run on love.

It runs on habit, and habit is enormously robust, and it will keep going for months after the load-bearing part has been removed, and neither person will necessarily notice.

He noticed nothing.