Iain's taken a long look at the Terrible Bargain from its other side, and doesn't want the easy comfort of unexamined privilege at the cost of my trust. And so he does his best to quell that reflexive defensiveness and listen.

And in those moments of listening, we forge a new bargain, lovingly struck: He looks inside himself for the hardened bits of internalized misogyny that yet linger, unexamined; I hand him in exchange the crumbling bricks of a protective wall built long before we met.

The rubble collects at our feet, and we kick it away.