Activity

One early summer day, we sat on the deck, fingers greasy from Popeyes, watching our older girls chase our little boys. My husband was working late, and I didn’t tell him we wouldn’t be there when he got home. I told Matthew about my misery and how I wished there was another woman. Something I could…

It’s hard to tell the truth about a marriage. We are, most of us, loyal to our loves. Revealing all the hundreds of tiny horrors, the everyday indignities, feels disloyal. I had a friend who was a pastor’s wife who would stop any conversation that devolved into frustrations about husbands by raisin…

The woman is an editor, was an editor. She laughs and corrects herself. I meet her at a party in Washington, D.C. She’s tall and blond and holds a glass of white wine in her manicured hands. I tell her I’m working on a book about divorce, and her eyes narrow.

“I want one of those,” she tells m…

As I was working on the book, my husband suggested we have a third child. He brought it up in therapy one day that summer when I was in the middle of research and writing. Maybe I could quit writing for a while? he suggested. Maybe I could just write a nice little novel and write it at night after …

The truth about accepting help is that it requires asking for it and coordinating it and paying for it, emotionally and financially. Financially, I took on extra freelance work to pay for housecleaning because it wasn’t in the budget. Emotionally, I dealt with my husband’s heavy sighs when he’d wal…