[ID: a page from Fruits Basket. Kyoko, all in black, has collapsed to her knees on the floor, sobbing and looking up as she wails, "Don't leave me! Please!" The second panel is slim and hard to make out, but compared with a previous panel, it's Katsuya's shoulder as seen from behind, lightly shaded as if fading. The last panel is a close up of tears pouring from Kyoko's eyes as she cries, "Don't... leave me...!" End ID.]

Man this makes me cry every time and I just. Look. Here's the thing. Katsuya really loved Kyoko, for the right reasons, and really did his best to do the right thing for her and make her happy. He made her certain that she was loved, and that she deserved love. But, well... she was sixteen when they got married. She might not have broken twenty yet at his death. They got married right after her parents kicked her out, and that was right after she'd left her gang and flunked out of middle school. She had literally no social connections outside of Katsuya, unless you count Katsuya's father. We never see her, even briefly, interacting with any friends or neighbours; it seems like her world, by and large, consists of Katsuya and Tohru, and Katsuya was extremely load-bearing both financially and emotionally. She has absolutely zero experience with living in the world without Katsuya caring for her. Katsuya wasn't purposefully isolating her, it's just a flat out, tragic fact of her age and place in life at the time they get married. It's why, with the best will in the world and genuine love behind it, it's still a really bad idea for teenagers to get married, especially if they're going to be the homemaker of the relationship; they're lacking so much experience and connection in the world that you need to be a grounded person. The grief of losing the person you love more than anyone else so young and so abruptly is already a lot and it's more than fair for it to be overwhelming, but I think that complete lack of grounding is what so completely undoes Kyoko and nearly kills her. She has nobody in the world except a toddler and a father-in-law who, by his own admission is pretty shite at being emotionally supportive to people; she doesn't have the friends that Tohru does when she's grappling with her own grief over losing Kyoko, which I think is part of why it never gets quite so dark for Tohru. It's a thing I really like about this manga, showing characters developing many different kinds of important relationships, because even a good, loving relationship can be dangerous if it's the only one you have.