Hi Sean. I definitely wasn’t doing all the “right things” to “keep” them, and I’m really thinking through how trying to “keep” someone was part of my problem. And the reason I left is in the piece: I got a job on another continent. I have to make a living and that living was elsewhere. And as I say in the piece, I definitely wasn’t the victim: I was a perpetrator. “I did this to us.” My advice wasn’t “great,” etc., because it actually wasn’t my place to give advice, etc. The whole point of the essay is that the issues weren’t with them. The issues were with me and I had to start understanding the codependency I’d been raised with (culturally as well as personally) before I could even begin to understand what was happening in those relationships.

As for representing the other side, I would never speak for someone else. All I can tell is my story, and narrative nonfiction *is* a story. Not a rulebook; or advice; or a definitive, objective truth. It’s just one of my stories, as I’m telling it at this moment, and as it’s evolving. Hope this helps!