Jana has told me, more than once, that she cannot eat pork chops and salmon anymore. I've heard her every time. Then I go to the grocery store and buy pork chops. Not because I don't care what she thinks. Because I'm tired, and it's easy, and the list is the list.

I wrote a book about decision fatigue. Then, at the end of a long day, mentally spent, I made a decision to hand off judgment to software and not look at what it produced. I'd like to report that the irony occurred to me before Jana yelled. It did not.

I quit for nine months. Three separate times. And every time, what ended it was a night out and a celebratory smoke. Celebratory. I'd banked nine months of evidence and then spent it as a reward for having banked it.

Every time you say you'll do something and don't, the thing you said gets a little cheaper. Not to the neighbor. The neighbor forgot about it walking back to the house. To you.

Somebody who loves you has been telling you the same thing for years and it goes right through you. Then a stranger says it once and it lands like a struck bell. That is not a flaw in your marriage. It is how distance works, and once you see it you can stop being surprised by it.