Mark Phillips' Pages: Workbook: 6/22/19: She told me, and she meant it, that a truly loyal, committed, long-term partner must always have at least one outside lover.

June 22, 2019:

It was impossible to achieve the simplest things. With the phone ringing, with her constant calling again and again throughout the days deep into the nights without pause and without remorse.

"I've unplugged the phone these last several days," begins one of many dozens of extremely pompous near-breakup letters. To achieve some peace, meaning, the relative calm necessary for even small accomplishments outside the core mission of providing whatever attention she required at whatever hour of the dial.

That is the reason for the breakup. Absence of that is the reason for so much accomplishment immediately after. Return was inevitable after her breakdown: you would and did drop your life to help her with hers. Still the reality is unmistakable: it was that brief two-year period between breakup and return which was the most satisfying and the most productive of your life.