When she asked if I wanted to talk I’m not sure she expected a conversation about marriage. We’d been grappling with some complex feelings brought on by the confession of a mutual acquaintance and I sensed her real reason for reaching out might be that she herself wanted to talk. I wasn’t ready to talk about the confession, so I talked about marriage.

“It’s kind of sad,” I said, “but I’ve been thinking a lot about how, among all the other things my mom is going to miss, she won’t see how...