It is one thing to be betrayed by a man who no longer loves you.

It is another to learn that he has been quietly assembling, over months, the paperwork to have you declared mad so that no one will listen when you protest what he takes.

I want to be precise about why this landed so much harder than the affair, because the difference is the whole reason I stopped being merciful that night.

An affair is a betrayal of feeling.

It says: I no longer love you, I love someone else, I lied about it.

That is a wound, but it is a human-sized wound, the kind people survive.