Not uncertainty about whether I loved him.

The flat, load-bearing conviction that my financial dependence had guaranteed my permanent submission — that I was his not because I chose to be, but because I could not afford to be otherwise.

“That assumption,” I told him, quietly, “was your single biggest mistake.” And I turned and walked away.

Because it was, and I want to sit with why, since it is the hinge the whole marriage turned on.

Brandon did not fail to hold onto me because he ran out of money, or love, or lawyers.

He failed because his entire strategy rested on a single assumption about my character that turned out to be false — the assumption that my dependence on him was the same thing as my consent to him.