I have thought a great deal, since, about that particular confusion, because I believe it is the trap that holds more good women in bad places than any other, and it held me for two decades without my ever seeing the bars.

We are taught, many of us, from very early, that a woman’s worth is measured by what she gives — that the highest form of love is sacrifice, that the good wife is the one who endures, who goes without, who puts herself last and calls it grace.

It is a beautiful teaching, and it is not entirely wrong, and that is exactly what makes it so dangerous, because a partial truth is a far better cage than a lie.

I did love Evelyn, and caring for her was a real good, and my sacrifice for her was not wasted.

But somewhere along the way I had let that true thing curdle into a false one — I had come to believe that my endurance itself was the proof of my value, that the more I suffered without complaint the more worthy I was, that a marriage in which I gave everything and received nothing was not a failed marriage but a successful test of my devotion.

And a man like Julian does not have to build that cage.