I was with the story until I clicked on the link to the discussion with the partner and there was the sentence about how she "learned French last year." That description really tells me something about the person who wrote this.

First of all, you can't "learn a language" in a year. It takes multiple years, and it's really a journey not a destination. I guarantee you his partner doesn't speak French at, say, a C1 or C2 level. Impossible.

Second, I feel like it exposes something about the writer here. Too much emphasis on state, too little on the transitions between state.