One day before the wedding, my fiancé laid a neat stack of documents on my kitchen table and said, ‘Add my name to your apartment, or there won’t be a wedding.’ For a second, I thought it had to be some awful, badly timed joke. Then I looked at his face and understood he had not spent the past few months preparing to become my husband. He had been preparing a move. So I let him believe I was willing to listen, smiled just enough to keep him comfortable, and waited for the moment when every plan he had hidden would finally come into the light.

Our first date was three nights later at a little Italian place in the West Village where the tables were too close together and the waiter called everyone sweetheart. He listened when I talked. Really listened.

Not in that performative way people do when they’re waiting for their turn to say something charming, but like he wanted to understand the shape of my life. He remembered details. He asked thoughtful follow-up questions.

He told me about his own childhood, his job, the friends he’d had forever, the way he wanted a real home one day instead of bouncing from rental to rental. That line got me, though I didn’t know it at the time. A real home.

I understood that hunger down to the bone. I didn’t come from money. My parents were decent people, but we were always one expense away from panic.

I grew up hearing things like not this month, maybe after tax season, don’t turn the thermostat up, and please make your sneakers last until winter. We were not tragic. We were not desperate.