The assessment had been conducted by someone else. Wael only did the follow-up sessions, the part the structural capacity evaluation didn't cover, which was everything after the number.
The woman across from him had a score of 2.1 on the Mason scale. The Mason scale went to 8. Most people in long-term relationships sat between 4.5 and 6. The test was reliable: twenty years of data, validated across populations, predictive of structural outcomes at 87% accuracy. Wael had been working with low-capacity clients for nineteen years. He had seen 2.1 before.
She was 38. She'd had the evaluation done after her third long-term relationship ended. She wanted to know if the test was wrong.
Wael understood what she was asking. She was asking whether the number was an error: a measurement issue, a bad sample day, something that would look different if they ran it again. He had a protocol for this: the scale had a margin of error of plus or minus 0.3. A 2.1 could be a 2.4. A 2.4 was still low capacity.
He told her the test was accurate. He said this gently, because it was always said gently.
She looked at the paper for a while. Then she asked the question that his nineteen years of follow-up sessions had not given him a protocol for: what did you do, if you were a 2.1, if you still wanted to build?
Wael had a 4.8. He had been in a relationship for eleven years that he would describe as structurally sound, meaning the things he'd built with his partner had mostly held, meaning the 13% of outcomes the Mason scale couldn't predict had gone in their favor. He knew what building felt like for someone who could do it.
He did not know what it felt like from the other side.
He told her he would look into it.
He said it as though there were a protocol for this. He had been saying it for nineteen years.