I looked back at her and I saw weakness, and stupidity, and cowardice, and I hated her for all the years she gave away.

It took me a great while, and some help, to understand that I had the story exactly backward.

That woman was not weak.

She was subjected, daily, for years, to a patient and skilled campaign designed specifically to make her doubt herself, carried out by a man who was good at it, and who had every advantage of confidence and charm and the whole culture’s assumption that a calm man must be more reliable than an emotional woman.

She did not fail to see the truth because she was foolish.

She failed to see it because a great deal of deliberate work went into keeping it from her, work she did not know was happening.