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On that first morning of my first year of being alone, I woke up too early, and looked around the way I imagined my husband might have. I remember knowing completely that he was the love of my life, which means nothing that can be explained except maybe that I knew the back of his neck as well as t…

At first our parents and friends seemed to think it was cute, and we agreed. When my husband went to university, his parents—gently at first—tried to suggest he “test the waters,” and when he resisted, they got a little more forceful in their recommendations. Once I overheard my mother on the phone…

What happened after that? I don’t even know how to answer that question. Which after? Here is where I wish I had a straight line to follow. There are some moments that seem to matter. As a condition of his visa, he had to stop working for a period after we moved, and I was working more than ever. H…

I watched them make a home and only sometimes thought of a fight between my husband and me that had seemed inconsequential in the moment and now, in comparison, changed. I would walk back to my own apartment, holding my gloved hands over my ears against the January wind, feeling the blood close to …

[...] Friedan says she used to be terrified of flying, but after The Feminine Mystique was published, she stopped being afraid. “Now I fly on jets across the ocean and on one-engine air taxis in the hills of West Virginia. I guess that, existentially, once you start really living your life, and doi…