Brett Bohlinger—Andrew Benson

Brett Bohlinger’s years-long relationship with Andrew Benson is defined, in her later reflections, by a painful mismatch between familiarity and fulfillment. She had wanted Andrew’s approval and, as she recognizes, sacrificed her sense of self trying to earn it; the relationship’s emotional distance later helps her understand why genuine affection can feel unfamiliar rather than safe.

The Relationship in Retrospect

Brett’s thoughts about Andrew surface while she is dating Herbert Moyer. Herbert is attentive and considerate, and she recognizes that he offers the kind of partnership she had hoped to find. Yet she admits that she could not have kept herself away from Andrew, even if retrieving Rudy had not been a reason to leave. The contrast is not that Herbert is a less capable lover: Brett considers him more attentive than Andrew. Instead, Andrew’s pull exposes how powerfully the old relationship still shapes her instincts.

That comparison complicates Brett’s idea of what feels normal. She worries that she is most comfortable with men who are emotionally cold and detached, naming both Andrew and Charles Bohlinger as examples. Herbert’s kindness, by contrast, can feel suffocating. Brett knows the discomfort does not mean Herbert is treating her badly; it suggests that distance has become more familiar to her than the care she says she wants.

Approval and the Cost to Brett’s Identity

Brett later connects her relationship with Andrew to her long effort to earn Charles’s approval. She recognizes a shared pattern: she worked to win affection from both men and, in doing so, sacrificed her true identity, yet still felt she fell short. Her recollection reframes the relationship as more than a failed romance. It belongs to a broader habit of measuring herself against other people’s approval instead of trusting her own sense of who she is.

The pattern also gives weight to Brett’s hesitation with Herbert. She questions whether she can accept a relationship in which she is loved without first proving herself. Her fear that the past could damage her future sits beside a new resolve: she is more aware of the pattern and does not want to repeat it. Andrew remains a reference point for what she once accepted, not a model she wants to carry forward.

A Counterpoint in Brett’s Later Attachments

Brett’s later actions offer a contrast to the approval-seeking she associates with Andrew. When Sanquita asks for help completing her diploma, Brett agrees and brings her a chemistry book. At Joshua House, Brett brings Thanksgiving dinner and meets Sanquita at the door with a basket of food. These moments show her responding to another person’s stated needs through practical care, rather than trying to secure affection by changing herself.

The distinction becomes especially stark when Sanquita, gravely ill after giving birth, asks Brett to take her baby. Brett initially insists that Sanquita will recover; afterward, she tells Austin Elizabeth that she will be her mother and promises to do everything in her power to make the child’s life safe and happy. These responsibilities do not prove that Brett has resolved every difficulty with intimacy, but they mark a different basis for commitment: she chooses to care for someone without making that care a test of whether she is worthy of love.

Significance

Andrew’s importance to Brett’s story lies partly in the way she reinterprets their relationship. She remembers being drawn to him, but also recognizes the cost of pursuing his approval and the familiarity of his emotional detachment. Against that history, Herbert’s attentiveness unsettles her precisely because it does not demand the self-erasure she associates with the past. Brett’s developing capacity to recognize the difference gives the relationship with Andrew a lasting consequence: it becomes a pattern she can name, and therefore one she can try not to repeat.