By the time I was 33, I had already been married and divorced twice. There were no regrets. I loved each man I married and carry with me great affection for them still, even though the end of each union came with its own pain.

My first marriage fell apart when my husband’s struggle with sexual identity manifested itself in lies that eroded my trust and ultimately ended his life.

It was the early days of the AIDS epidemic. When he discovered he was H.I.V. positive, he lied to me about his secret life with anonymous men and blamed his infection on my previous boyfriend.

He admitted the truth only after we received the good news that I had tested negative. I was tested every six months for the next two years and lived with the terror that I would seroconvert. We divorced, but he asked me to be the keeper of his tortured secret, and we remained close until the day he died just before his 33rd birthday.