Living with someone—sharing a bedroom and bathroom and personal space—was a new experience for me. The friends I’d lived with before had all been other wannabe actors with weird schedules, which meant we usually didn’t see much of each other. I didn’t know the protocol. How much rent do I charge? Does all of her stuff get equal room? Do I take down some of my art so she can put up some of hers? What if she doesn’t like my dog?

We had already agreed not to talk about marriage until we’d lived together for at least a year, to see if we were even compatible, so I didn’t know how enmeshed we should allow ourselves to get. Dianne laughed off all my fears and said I should relax and not worry so much, that fate and destiny would sort themselves out without my help. I was afraid I’d drive her away, so I shut up. This was the first relationship I’d had that had a shot at marriage, and I didn’t want to do anything that would jeopardize it. Plus, Dianne was the first woman I’d ever loved, and once I realized that, I decided that love was what I had been missing all along, that if the rest of Hollywood was really in love (in which case, by my logic, they’d also be having amazing sex), they wouldn’t need all those spiritual distractions. The Beatles were right. All you need is love.

Things with Dianne and I as roommates started out great. We’d run lines together over dinner, watch movies, work out together—she had incredible strength, she’d put me to shame—and of course spend as much time as possible in bed. The first five months were bliss. Everyone on DC thought we were a great couple. And we were!

But there were some definite problems. For one thing, we weren’t very good at the whole confrontation thing. She’d turn tail and run at the first sign of conflict, and to be honest, I was a bit pushy at times. For example, there was a new guy on the set of DC who was in a few episodes, and he and Dianne were in some really intense scenes. Dianne hadn’t had much acting experience before making it onto DC, so to her credit, she probably didn’t understand that intense acting can bring on intense feelings between the actors involved. It was totally obvious that the two of them were experiencing this, and this upset me, but I’ll admit I didn’t handle it very well.

“You were all over him, Dianne!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Jack. What should we do for dinner?”

“You couldn’t keep your hands off him; it was so obvious! Everyone saw it.”