I had my first Don Draper moment in 2004.

I was at home on winter break after a personally disastrous first semester of my junior year of college. Sixteen years later, good and grown, I’m embarrassed at how viscerally I can recall the moment that snapped me in two; that I still tear up over something so small in hindsight because I can still feel myself shattering. The details are irrelevant, just know the situation is what I think of when I hear Destiny’s Child’s “Is She the Reason.”

If...