Chocolate = Italiano is like a chemical equation.  How is this?  It's a series of events that are initiated by chocolate, one inevitably catalyzing the next, until I begin considering it is time to resume learning the italian language.
The equation:
Husband-to-be eats food with chocolate (though by no means is chocolate the only catalyzer of this equation), which leads the next morning to an excessive increase in body acne breakouts on his arms and back, which then leads inexorably to his infuriation and depression, whereupon he begins making various threats of self destruction including suicide (backed up by demonstrations of storming into the kitchen to find a knife), and then I, unable by anything I say or do to stop this dying kitten from his death-wish, find myself contemplating where my life will be if he thus leaves me.  First of course, should I return to the apartment later to find him dead, I would have to call 911 or some other agency which handles such things, then go through a funeral process and face my family and his and somehow answer their questions of "why and what and how", and finally - pick up the pieces of my life and attempt to move on.  The United States holds no attachment for me and so the next step would be preparing once again for a new life in sunny Italia, which of course means resuming my study of the lingua italiana.
After more than two years of his suicide threats on almost a weekly basis, at this point I am for my own self-protection mostly numb and removed.  Like it was after the dying kittens for whom I could do nothing that made any difference in the end - I had to take practical measures and move on with my life. Since I do, in fact, have that inexplicable indomitable will to live.
In many ways, my responses to life events are more like a man's response than a typical female response - in that my first thoughts are always practical, solution-based -- rather than emotional.  Which awareness also plays into the mental chain of events in my head -- picturing myself in the funeral stage of the scenario, wondering if I will be dry-eyed and stony - and how would members of his family then judge me... for most certainly they would judge, as that is always their modus operandi for any situation, whether it involve one of their own or an outsider such as I.
Emotionally speaking, if I do take a half step down that path to imagining the "chemical equation" of how his death would affect me -- imagining life in this city, our apartment, and my daily job, without him -- I see a bleak and meaningless life.  After 6 years in this greatest of all cities, the novelty and thrill has long since warn off, and at this point it is completely true to say that all sense of purpose and reason for living here, for considering any future plans, establishing friends, residences, etc. -- are 100% a product of my relationship with husband-to-be.  In fact -- I would say he is both the root and the platform on which I sit, removed from any direct connection that might prove to have the slightest pull to keep me, or consolation or satisfaction I could take refuge in if he were gone.
With the root and platform of his being removed - I would find myself standing directly on the ground of what would be to me little more than a barren wasteland, a city whose soil I have exhausted and can no more consider a place where I might put down my own roots for the potential of bearing fruit.  I would therefore HAVE to leave, to start a new life in Italy, where the novelty, challenge and unknown of it still allow the possibility of hope and potential.  Potential for what exactly? I'm not always sure -- potential primarily for a meaningful life, satisfaction, reason-for-being.  Surprisingly, I find only secondary the potential for happiness, friends, another husband, laughter, intellectual stimulation.  "Meaning" -- that seems to be the base of my own personal pyramid of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
How much more fundamental can it get - the meaning of life.  Which brings me to a bit of an odd conclusion, that being that my husband-to-be is essentially the meaning of my life.  And it's not just any man in the relationship equation who provides this for me -- after 20 years of searching, dating for shorter or longer durations (meeting at least 1000 men in that span) I can say that only maybe two others had the potential to provide that kind of peace of mind, that resting of the restlessness, other than that, even in relationship I was typically ill at ease, tossing to and fro on the waves of meaninglessness, chafing at their constrictions and soon enough (whether 3 days, 3 months or even a year) ending it and moving on.  And yet, even with 2 and a half years of husband-to-be's suicidal rages alternating with semi-normal stretches -- I find that he has provided me that grounded peace, the rest from the searching, the meaning for being.  But why, really? It's almost laughable that someone as unstable and with such a weak hold on the tether of life, someone who himself is no deep philosopher of the deeper questions of life's meaning - could be my own shelter and rest.
Obviously, he is not THE meaning of life, and yet it seems that somehow, in the mystery of my inner soul, it is enough that he is MY meaning of life, and in a kind of denial of the actual meaningless and false meaning that this really is, I am content to live with this surrogate meaning, like an umbrella shielding me from the stormy billows of life's true untamed mysterious unchartered territory.  Considering he really has no answers or even philosophical thoughts on the matter of life's meaning, that he lives closer to life's basest physical and emotional needs - creature comforts, pride in constructions projects, a raging obsession with clear skin, and relationship -- I do wonder how someone like this has become my spiritual rest from my need for ultimate meaning.
But there is no doubt when and if he goes before me, my life loses all meaning and I am groundless.  It is probably strange that Italy holds hope of meaning for me, but no stranger than saying he has been meaning for me.
Really - what can it be about him? What does he have that few other men had? There can be no defining or understanding it, and I can only say that a fundamental love is at the root.  Not the euphoric high or bliss that love is in the beginning stages, certainly not after all he has put me through with his rages and depressions, but love none the less.  Not having ever lost anyone before, I do have to wonder -- would I indeed by dry eyed at the funeral, or would the loss of this first and only long-term love of my life bring emotional devastation and temporary incapacitation?  I cannot predict.