"You've had things work out before," Chuck says with a shrug. The beginning and the end of his relationship experience, meanwhile, is Beth, and though he knows it's not on him that it didn't work out — it was more about the circumstances than anything else — it still leaves him fairly clueless. He almost wonders if it might be easier not to try at all, only he never gets very far when he considers that. There's something about Laura. Maybe he doesn't know what it is, but he does know that it's there. "It's... She had things pretty bad, back home. I don't want to make that worse."

Even saying it, it seems incongruous with how he acts so much of the time, but it isn't like he's ever gone out of his way to be an asshole. He just hasn't often had much cause to make an effort to be nice.