What happened next didn’t feel like liberation so much as demolition. After midnight, I started texting with a sweet, respectful software engineer I’d seen a few times before, aboveboard, within the parameters of Aaron’s and my rules. Eventually it became clear that I was, at that moment, again going to break those rules. I slipped out wearing nothing but a sundress to go meet the guy while Aaron was dead to the world. When I walked through my own door at four a.m., knees buckling and hair a mess, there was a large part of me that wished Aaron would wake up and demand to know where I’d been—not just because the despair was starting to creep back and an angry confrontation would have been more satisfying than nothingness, but because I knew it was over, and I wanted him to do the honors.

He didn’t. I don’t want this, I thought: not this relationship, not an affair, not a life devoid of the erotic. A few weeks later, I moved out.