By the time our daughter arrived, we’d already been in couples therapy for three years, all but the first year of our relationship. Once a week, we went to a basement office and sat together on a loveseat that never felt large enough. The harder our home life got, the more guilty I felt for wanting to leave it. This was the same deluded faith in difficulty that made me starve myself at eighteen, running seven miles on the treadmill after six saltines for dinner. This same voice rose up again to say, The harder it feels, the more necessary it must be.