He and I have had a very close relationship for a very long time. That had a lot to do with him taking me seriously and me willing to spend the time needed to talk with him. While I call it a conversation, it was a lot of conversations over several months. And after many of them he wouldn't talk to me for a few weeks. It really was a process. Without the underlying relationship I suspect one or the other of us would have simply walked away from the other. But that is a hard thing to explain in a short HN post.