[page-47]

He needs cruelty, needs coldness - warmth and friendship and comfort are only preludes to loss, and he has no tolerance left for any of them. Harshness, he can deal with - it's gentleness that would break him.

<...>

His gift has always been acceptance. He can accept a friend's casual cruelty, can love the man who abandoned him, can suffer loss after loss and still rebuild, can die and revive over and over again and retain the will to live - but he's a social creature, and this time, too many of his ties have been severed.

He's been stripped of too much, and the phantom pain will not relent.
(c)

yep. pretty much.