For two years, I had made myself smaller to keep a toxic marriage alive.

I had excused Julian’s late nights, and ignored his coldness, and blamed myself for the distance that grew between us, telling myself that a good wife is patient, that a good wife is understanding, that a good wife swallows her intuition and bears the burden of her husband’s disrespect in dignified silence.

I had genuinely believed that this shrinking was a virtue, that my capacity to endure being treated poorly was a measure of my goodness as a wife.

And I had been wrong.