We spent evenings on my front porch reading articles aloud with titles such as “Marriage Is Murder,” “The Future of Queer” and “Against the Couple Form.” We dreamed about what our lives could look like if we gave ourselves permission to be free from conventions. I was mortified at the thought of absorbing into a couple, and I knew it would be difficult, but I wanted to build a life of commitment where friendships mattered as much as romantic partnership.

She emailed me a tweet from someone that said, “The best decisions I have ever made were made possible by my inability to invest in heterosexual narratives of love. The fact of being queer weirdly saved me from so much loneliness, even as it demographically made intimacy so much harder to find.”

I sent back a line of heart-eye emoji, and later, parked below my apartment windows on an early winter evening, Mirah put her arm around my shoulders and said, “Sammy, you are my epicenter.”

And for a while I was. Mirah picked me up for work every morning, I made her lunch on Sundays, and we made a beeline for each other in crowded rooms. She became No. 1 on my speed dial; we talked every day.

When I thought I had bedbugs, she was the one I called in a panic. She came over with an acupressure mat, an iPhone tuned to the sound of waves and a flashlight.

“I’m anxious,” I said as I lay crying on the floor.

“I know,” she said as she stood above me.

For the first time I admitted (just to myself, in a whisper) how good it felt to rely on someone. Mirah pried me open and slowly I trusted she would be there, every time, solid. I started picturing my life with her always in it. Whatever shape our relationship took — because we had insisted on the permission to let ourselves change — I expected the changes would be small and that she would be central.