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Reflections on Identity
The Price of Partnership
Why I’m pretty sure I’m happy to be single after a long marriage
In recent weeks, I’ve been highly attuned to the small, daily interactions between long-time married couples. I vacillate between feeling that the end of my own marriage has brought irretrievable losses and that it has freed me to be who I was meant to be without the weight of a partner dragging me down. I look to the universe for signs that the scale is tipping in favor of one option or the other, and by universe I don’t mean cosmic suggestions but simply observations on how it all works for other people.
I was having lunch with a friend a few weeks ago when her husband called to ask if she could make him an appointment for a hair cut. She got off the phone and rolled her eyes, complaining that in his middle age, her husband seemed unable to execute even small tasks like this one. Can you gently suggest that he do it himself? I asked. She said she had tried, but he always came back with the request anyway.
Later in the day, I was at another friend’s house when her husband came home to shower and change for a business dinner. He called out from the bathroom asking if she had given him a new toothbrush, as there was a new one in the bathroom. She called out no to him and we kept…
