A few years back, I got a phone call from a friend at 9:30 at night. For a few seconds, I looked between the name flashing on the screen and the half-filled suitcase in front of me. I had decided, at the last minute, to get on a one-way flight to a country I hardly knew to see a man I had met twice. (That man is now my husband and father of my soon-to-be-born child.) I let the phone ring, knowing it wasn’t urgent and that I would call back soon when I was making a slightly less life-changing decision. 

That friend never spoke to me again. When I called him after I got to the other side, following an eight-hour flight, a three-hour stint in passport control, and a few other time-consuming chores that tend to arise when you get on a flight to a new home in a new country with no real plan, my call was rejected. After some more attempts, I got a friendship breakup text. He wasn’t willing to have a relationship with someone who wasn’t all in, he explained. Who wouldn’t pick up the phone at the drop of a hat regardless of what was going on?