“Why can’t you ever support me?” he sometimes screams when he is angry. You moved east to live with him; dropped out of your PhD program to follow him to Europe and then raise your children; you do almost all the child-rearing, cooking, coordination with teachers, doctors, parents of other children. If anyone in your household is sick, you cancel out-of-town trips for your writing, push back deadlines, stay home in deference to the fact that your husband is the one earning the money. You attend his business dinners and holiday parties, make peace with his difficult mother and drive frequently to Iowa during her illness. During the years he spends shouting this at you, you don’t understand what he means—it feels genuinely, at that time, as though your and your children’s lives all revolve to a significant extent around your husband’s career, your husband’s moods, your husband’s needs.

It does not occur to you until later that what he was really screaming was Why aren’t you genuinely interested in anything I care about? You are going through the motions of being an almost Stepfordly devoted wife, but something unsettled and bored has set in. You rarely fail to have dinner waiting for him, but when he talks about his work, about the men’s group he has joined, with their “warrior names,” your eyes are, more with each passing year and without your even knowing it, already on the door.