Vanessa had been living in my home for seventeen months, and we had been engaged for six.

In all that time she had formed a theory of me, and the theory was that I was soft.

She had watched me avoid confrontation, watched me smooth over conflicts rather than force them, watched me give people the benefit of the doubt, and she had concluded that these were weaknesses, that a man who dislikes fighting is a man who cannot fight.

It is a common mistake, and an understandable one, and it is almost always made by people who have never actually needed the person they are underestimating.