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In All of This, Rebecca Woolf writes of her own marriage, which ended when her husband died of cancer, “At the time, I thought I was being brave by sticking it out. By staying together for the kids. But it isn’t brave to sit passively in your misery…. The bravest women I know are not widows. They a…

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 …