Good morning from Martha’s Vineyard. What’s on my mind this morning is this conversation I had with a good friend of mine a few weeks ago. By way of background, she’s someone who I speak with maybe once a month or so and we have intimate, far-reaching conversations. In this one conversation – she’s in a new relationship maybe six months in – we were talking about everything from different sleeping patterns, to some of his physical ailments, to the thought of possibly moving in together and him giving up his apartment.

I followed up with her with one of my usual WhatsApp messages and shared some of my experiences and some of my concerns. Then I didn’t hear back from her. Like I said, we don’t speak too frequently yet somehow I knew that I had perhaps touched a nerve, and I was a little bit concerned that I had crossed a line. But I let it go. I trusted that she knew that whatever I said was definitely coming from my heart. Anyway, a couple weeks ago I pinged her and she immediately called me and we had one of our great conversations. Then we got to what I thought was the elephant in the room. Maybe she didn’t feel it, but in my mind it was there. She said, you know the last time we spoke, I think I was mourning what I was expecting in this relationship. And I said to her say more, and she said, well, I had this story in my head about what I thought my next relationship would look like and he’s not that.

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