In 1963 I lusted after comic books.

Not liked.

Not enjoyed.

Not collected.

Lusted.

The distinction matters.

People enjoy a cup of coffee. They enjoy a sunny afternoon. They enjoy a comfortable chair.

Nobody enjoyed comic books the way I experienced them.

Comic books occupied the same territory as desire.

The same territory as hunger.

The same territory as religious longing.

A ten-cent comic book was not ten cents.

A ten-cent comic book was access.

Access to another world.

Access to another self.

There is a particular kind of grief that does not fit neatly into the categories.

No one died yesterday.

No catastrophe appeared on the evening news.

There is no funeral.

No casserole arrives at the door.

And yet something feels gone.

Folks describe it in odd ways.

The neighborhood doesn't feel the same.

The profession doesn't feel the same.

The country doesn't feel the same.

Dating doesn't feel the same.

Marriage doesn't feel the same.

The future doesn't feel the same.

The feeling is difficult to name because the object of grief is often invisible. What has disappeared is not necessarily a person. It is a world.

A set of assumptions.

A map of reality.

A future we quietly expected to inhabit.

This may be one reason the enduring appeal of Supergirl feels increasingly relevant.

For all the capes and cosmic battles, Supergirl is not fundamentally a story about superpowers.

It is a story about surviving the destruction of a world and waking up somewhere that no longer follows the rules you were taught.

In that sense, she may be one of popular culture's most compelling trauma icons.

Not because she suffers.

Many heroes suffer.

Because she remembers.

The text message arrived at 10:47 p.m.

A name appeared on the screen.

Nothing unusual.

No declaration of love.

No suspicious photograph.

No obvious betrayal.

A text message.

That was all.

Yet by midnight the marriage felt different.

The facts had not changed.

The atmosphere had.

A possibility had entered the room.

And possibilities have remarkable power.

Particularly inside intimate relationships.

Because relationships do not operate exclusively on reality.

They operate on perceived reality.

The difference between those two things can determine the fate of a marriage.

Most marriages are not damaged by certainty.

They are damaged by the stories we construct in the absence of certainty.

A friend recently told me that his twenty-something employee quit rather than make a phone call.

Not a threatening phone call.

Not a call to the IRS.

Not a call informing a family member of a tragedy.

A perfectly ordinary phone call.

The kind of phone call that, for most of the twentieth century, was considered so unremarkable that nobody would have mentioned it afterward.

Today it qualifies as a story.

This is one of those moments when older folks begin saying things that make younger folks roll their eyes.

"Kids these days..."

Usually that phrase is a warning sign.

Civilizations have been complaining about younger generations since before anyone was old enough to complain about younger generations.

"That's not why I did it."

He said it quietly.

Not because he was angry.

Because he was tired.

Tired of explaining the same thing for what felt like the hundredth time.

His wife had interpreted a decision one way.

He had experienced it another.

Neither was trying to deceive the other.

Neither was particularly unreasonable.

Yet both felt unseen.

If you've been in a long relationship, you probably recognize the feeling.

The exhausting realization that the person sitting across from you is responding not to you, but to a version of you.

A version assembled from history.

Interpretation.

Fear.

Disappointment.

Hope.

Old arguments.

Old wounds.

Old stories.

And once that version takes hold, it becomes surprisingly difficult to escape.

"I know you called."

The room became quiet.

Not angry quiet.

Not contemptuous quiet.

The other kind.

The kind that arrives when two life partners suddenly realize they have been discussing different marriages.

He was talking about behavior.

She was talking about experience.

He was explaining that he had called every day while traveling for work.

She was explaining that she had never felt more alone.

Neither statement contradicted the other.

Yet both felt misunderstood.

The fight began over a sentence nobody could prove had ever been spoken.

Not an affair.

Not money.

Not sex.

A sentence.

"You said you didn't want me to come."

"I never said that."

"You absolutely did."

"No. I absolutely didn't."

Within twenty minutes they were discussing events from three years earlier.

By forty minutes, they had recruited supporting evidence from a family vacation, Thanksgiving dinner, and an incident involving a folding chair that neither could fully remember.

If you've been in a long relationship, you know this territory.

The argument is no longer about the sentence.

It is about reality itself.

There is a peculiar assumption woven into modern life.

We assume intelligence travels well.

If someone can build a company, teach graduate students, diagnose a complex illness, write software, manage investments, or explain quantum mechanics, we assume they should also be able to understand why their spouse is upset.

Yet these are not the same skill.

Not even close.

The abilities that allow a person to understand complex ideas and the abilities that allow a person to navigate complex social situations overlap far less than most folks imagine.

One involves reasoning. The other often involves interpretation.

One depends heavily on explicit information.

The other frequently depends on information that is implied, contextual, emotional, or nonverbal.

For some couples, that distinction changes everything.

At some point in a long marriage, two intelligent adults find themselves arguing about the meaning of a sentence that, moments earlier, seemed incapable of producing an international incident.

The scene is rarely cinematic.

No one is throwing crystal stemware against a marble fireplace.

Usually, someone is standing at the kitchen sink.

There is unopened mail.

A half-drunk cup of coffee gone cold.

The dog's medication sitting beside a grocery list that includes cilantro, batteries, and toothpaste.

One spouse says, "It would have been nice if you'd helped more when my parents visited."

The other replies, "I took them to breakfast on Saturday."

Silence.

They are the ones everyone asks for advice.

They can explain mortgage rates, constitutional law, or the geopolitical implications of a trade agreement with unnerving precision.

They remember obscure details from books they read twenty years ago. They write thoughtful emails. They use words like nuance correctly and without irony.

Then they spend twenty minutes wandering through a parking garage because they cannot remember where they left the car.

They arrive at the wrong entrance to a building despite checking the directions twice.

They walk into a gathering and suddenly have no idea where to stand, how long to maintain eye contact, or whether the joke they just made landed or detonated.

Nobody quite knows what to do with this contradiction.

Least of all them.

One partner says:

"We've been disconnected for years."

The other replies:

"What are you talking about? Things were fine until last month."

Neither is lying.

They are simply reading different weather reports.

There is a peculiar modern belief that if two reasonably evolved adults simply communicate clearly enough, intimacy will sort itself out.

Use "I" statements.

Reflect what you hear.

Validate feelings.

Schedule check-ins.

Buy the card deck game.

Listen to the podcast.

Learn each other's love language.

The assumption beneath all of this is charming.

It is also wrong.

Every era develops its favorite explanation for why relationships fail.

The Victorians blamed morality. Mid-century Americans blamed mothers. The 1990s blamed communication. Today, we blame narcissism.

It is, in many ways, the perfect modern diagnosis.

It sounds psychologically sophisticated. It carries moral clarity. It offers the relief of explanation.

Most importantly, it locates the problem safely inside someone else's personality.

There is comfort in believing we finally know what happened.

"My spouse isn't overwhelmed."

"My wife isn't emotionally avoidant."

"My husband isn't ashamed."

"They're just a narcissist."

Case closed.