The Cut - It Wasn’t Just a Breakup

I can feel the difference between being in and out of the know like an itch on my arm. Where before, we’d traveled through the darkness of Brooklyn like wayward twins, weaved and wedded in need, now we were like two wives, one left at home until dawn while the other went out to explore the dirty trails of their own worlds alone.

He was walking into our apartment at 4:00 a.m., wasted, his shadow trembling from 12 hours of drinking. Terrified (of the obvious — the police; the subway tracks; his drunk temper and the street), I would wake up at 3:00 a.m. searching for him, and he would walk in just as I was about to doze off again, whispering to me that he’d come from an after-party (on a Tuesday, my G?) and needed to shower. Then he’d crawl into bed for the ten minutes between his bedtime and my rising, clutching at my body like it was a secret. Something wasn’t right, but at the same time, not a lot was wrong.

After all, this is what I wanted for him, the kind of freedom that would make him the main character in his own life so that I could live a kind of freedom where my desires were most important. This is why I asked for an open relationship, why I was hungry for him to build new relationships. But I had an inkling that he was lying, and there was something about it that had sparked a brush in the corner of the barn.

Forget overpriced, underwhelming fine dining — these are the only worthwhile Valentine’s Day plans. Ben Affleck the director > Ben Affleck the actor/boyfriend/meme. After lavishing their employees with perks, tech companies have turned to mass job cuts, which working parents have felt in an “especially visceral way.” When the Chiefs return to Super Bowl on Sunday, Native American protesters will be there, calling for the team to drop its name, logo, and trademark “war chant.” Rather than solving the nation’s gun crisis, the Supreme Court “instead sent the people’s representatives on archival scavenger hunts,” and it’s going to get women killed. We’re all effectively right-handed now, even the southpaws. And see the striking image that won the Wildlife Photographer of the Year People’s Choice Award.

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