But Mary spent more and more time with friends. Sometimes she even stayed at her parents’ house. Duncan had no chance, no choice. How could he? He didn’t have the experience to combat it, to see the signs. To Duncan, sadly enough, the only way to get her back was to keep showing her the truth, even though it was clear to anyone with any sense that he’d need to start lying to her if he wanted to keep her. (A cynical view that would only serve as a short-term solution. And I was neither so naive nor Mary so experienced as you make out.) Every time he showed her the truth, she pushed him farther away. Duncan wrote in his journal:

I feel as if I am living by myself again. She isn’t really here anymore. She’s a husk or a shell. Her eyes are dull. Her hair is dull. Her words are weighted and slow. She doesn’t listen to me. I am killing her.

But the truth also meant accepting that the day-to-day domesticity didn’t suit him either, especially for long periods of time. I will spare you the contrast between the journal entries that detail with a silly kind of joy the beauty of her snores early in their relationship and the dull snarl of his comments on those self-same snores near the end. Or, take this terse entry only a month before disaster: “another night of odd smells.” Sometimes he would be almost apologetic: “She could easily have complained about the frequency with which I spored. Or how I tracked in strange green mud from time to time. But she didn’t.”

Even then, I think he wanted to stay with her. I don’t believe he ever understood that he might actually lose her. (I couldn’t, back then, imagine a tolerable moment without her—and, in all honesty, tolerable moments since I lost her have been fewer and less intense.) After all, he’d never been through a breakup before—unlike me, who had been through dozens. I had become an expert on broken relationships. It had become ritualized with me, each battle with its own histories, its own decorum, and its own rules of disengagement.

Duncan and Mary managed to stay together in their little apartment for a few more months, but like the starfish that rapidly became brittle, their love had died long before they acknowledged the fact. The bond between them had broken, snapped, and although Duncan was still in love with her—even though I don’t know if he liked her anymore—she was not in love with him. Their situation frayed, unraveled. They had screaming arguments, tearful reunions. Duncan would seek refuge at my apartment, only to go back, over my objections.

He wrote in his journal at some point near the end: