Thank you for such a thoughtful comment, AK. I smiled at this part: "I started reading, as a male, to find out what kind of "line" would fit the headline description. It wasn't the story I expected. It was way more interesting and personally revealing." Thank you. That's what I was hoping the story would do. The headline didn't promise a line, it promised "the best reason," and I'd say that Alex's words indeed had much more substance than a line and were the best reason. ;)

Regarding privilege, I come from a background in sociology, and privilege can best be explained as not so much an "extra" advantage that a person receives over and above what they deserve (though it can be), but rather an area in which they are not expected to put in extra work in order to receive baseline-fair treatment. So the reflection on Alex's male privilege was referring to how, in the social sciences, researchers have noticed that women are expected to put in more emotional labor than men (and more emotional labor than is necessarily healthy), whereas the same "extra" is *not* expected from men. So for Alex to believe he could just casually walk away from a person's feelings if he wanted to, this was partly an element of his socialization; women, by contrast, are socialized to feel like they must go above and beyond to be sweet, attentive, and nurturing — even when they'd rather not keep investing energy in a given person. I'm not sure if that explains it better, but that's what I was getting at: Alex's male privilege held an important insight for me about realistic, healthy, baseline obligations — whereas my own socialization on the same front (as a girl/woman) taught me that I was expected to perform unrealistic, unhealthy amounts of fawning, above and beyond a justifiable "baseline" of care.

Sociology aside, I'm really glad you found this story so meaningful, and I wholly agree with you: emotional intelligence is an EXTREMELY attractive trait in a partner. Thank you for reading!