What was the understanding exactly?

The strength you had when you sat there, a couple for many years now with all the landscape sewn together of habits and tics and old jokes. . . it was the strength you had of knowing that you were not alone--the solid, indestructible knowledge of the otherness of others.

Millet, Lydia. Ghost Lights. NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011. 52. Print.