One of the drawbacks of being single I've discovered are the times when I'm sick. I miss my ex-husband in those moments when I'm shivering, covered in sick sweat, head pounding and body aching, and all I want is for someone to bring me a cup of tea. Or to not have to crawl to the kitchen to make myself something to eat. For someone to put a cool hand against my forehead and ask if there's anything that I need.

It's rather pathetic, in those moments, to miss someone who hurt me so badly. He also wasn't the most sympathetic when I was sick, either. During the course of our marriage, I wasn't sick very often so he didn't have much practice. I didn't want to bother him or feel like a burden either, so I tried to limit my requests to simple things, like a Sprite when he was going to the store or soup. He always delivered those, but seemed to miss on the connection of the loving part, of being able to just keep a cool hand on my forehead or rub my back.

The year before our marriage fell apart, my ex-husband was diagnosed with pneumonia. Fortunately, he was not hospitalized, but he was quarantined for 48 hours and then stayed home from work for the next week, laying on the couch, bouncing back and forth from feeling decent to covered in sweat. I did my best to make sure that I kept him comfortable since that was the first time he had been truly sick in the course of our 15 years together. I made sure he had enough to drink, all his favorite beverages and snacks on hand, and rubbed his feet or back when it seemed like he needed it. We had to postpone a trip to visit his parents in Arizona, and I knew he was disappointed, so I tried not to show relief that we weren't going.

But the worst part of his illness -- the part that made me feel guilty because it made me so anxious -- was that I had to do all the cooking during that time period. Our relationship always had a careful balance in the kitchen: he did all the cooking, and I did all the cleaning after. Not because I was incapable of cooking, but because I didn't have the patience for it, and he was a far superior cook. I was always in awe of how he could whip up a scrumptious dish without a recipe and just a few ingredients at hand. I had never boiled an egg.

The first night after he was diagnosed with pneumonia and after he called his parents to let them know we weren't able to come visit that weekend, I asked him what he wanted for dinner. Knowing that we both knew I was a mediocre cook at best, I was expecting him to request something simple, like tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. (He was a pescatarian, who rarely ate the fish part of being a pescatarian.) However, when asked, he looked at me with a straight face and said "How about Pad Thai?" At some point, we had acquired a Thai cookbook, which I don't think either of us had ever opened. I thought he was joking but, when he opened the cookbook and pointed to the recipe, I knew he was serious. With a sigh and a feeling of absolute panic, I took a photo of the recipe and headed to the grocery store to buy the ingredients, many of which I had never heard before. (For example, I ended up spending 45 minutes in the grocery store looking for the bean sprouts and, as I was nearing tears and ready to give up, found them in a plastic bag with tongs in the produce aisle.) I ended up making the Pad Thai -- with tofu, for his sake. It was actually decent, and my ex was mildly complimentary toward it, which was good for him.

The next few days he insisted that I make all sorts of dishes that he knew I had never made before. He leaned against the counter in the kitchen and walked me through making vegetarian chili; I had never made chili, let alone cooked with soy crumble before. Stir fry with rice and vegetables; baked salmon and rosemary seasoned potatoes; some other crazy meal after crazy meal. Each meal I panicked and had extreme anxiety over, wanting to make sure that it met his approval. Finally I asked him why he was asking me to make such complicated meals, thinking that it was maybe an excuse to hang out in the kitchen with me and talk since he was home alone all day without anyone else to talk to while he was sick. He just laughed and said, "Because I wanted to see if you could."

During the last ten months of our marriage, when things were falling apart and he was barely speaking to me, he stopped cooking. I did all of the cooking during that time period, and I discovered that I could do it independently, that I enjoyed it as well -- other than the underlining reason of why I was doing all the cooking. I scoured Allrecipes.com, clipped recipes from magazines, flipped through that damn Thai cookbook, and tried them. I learned how to cook soy crumble, tofu, and all the vegetarian "meat" substitutes. Each dish was an elaborate way to prove my love to my ex, to show him that I was capable of creating something from scratch just for him. It was one of those illogical, desperate attempts that I made during that time to show him that I was worthy of his love.

In the end, I had a collection of recipes that I took with me when I moved out and filed for divorce. It also made me a good cook, a skill that I've been able to use for myself, friends, family, and those I have dated since my divorce. And for the people I've made the Pad Thai recipe for, they all given me rave reviews.