They are not afraid of your anger.

They want your anger.

Your anger is the thing they know how to use.

A man who calls in a screaming rage gives them a recording.

A man who throws a punch gives them an assault charge.

A man who makes a wild threat gives them a restraining order and a story about an unstable veteran.

Every raw, natural, human expression of a wronged man’s love becomes, in the hands of a clever enemy, a tool against him — which means that the single most protective thing I could do for my wife, in that moment, was the thing that felt most like doing nothing: to hold still, to swallow the fire, to give them not one scrap of the reaction they were fishing for.

It felt, in the moment, almost like a betrayal of her — as though not raging meant not caring enough.