Anyone who had been involved in a road accident can relate.

We have this invincible faith 'It won't happen to me'. Either it's the overconfidence acquired through years of impeccable driving record or just bad luck.

And then it happens. It shatters all your perspectives. It would be easier to recover if there wasn't any casualty AND/OR gore in the accident spot. The thousand 'if only' arguments you have with yourself. Eventually life goes on, nevertheless, the road is never the same again.

That's how the realization of AWALT is. The belief that the crush, the gf, the wife: isn't like all other girls. That such a relationship disaster cannot happen to me, however insufficient the proof of it may sound. Such a belief's purpose is served when any uneasiness he has about his relationship is put on the back burner as he keeps slaving: man up and provide for her, to strive to make her happy, to ignore her faults, to forgive her mistakes- whether she acknowledges or otherwise, whether she returns that love or behaves absolutely selfish- all in that quintessential hope that 'it can't happen to me'. The constant reassurances he tells himself that all the shit that he goes through is all worth it, because 'she can't go wrong'.

And then it happens. It may not be a case of outright cheating but the coming to terms with 'she is not what he thinks she is'. There's internal battles: this can be seen where men just can't acknowledge that they were cheated/abused. They find reasons to exonerate her: 'maybe it's me? Was I wrong somewhere? Was I lacking in something? Maybe if I hadn't done that, she wouldn't had cheated. Was it her medication?'

What they fail to see is that one can take only so much of blame for a situation when it's clear that the other person is wrong. Beyond the notions of love and romance, it would be an arduous journey to reach the conclusion that he was in love with (his own projection of) an idea of a her, not her.

Lucky is the man who can walk away from an accident site without much loss of blood.

Lucky is the man who can walk away from the plantation without much damage to his emotions and finances.