“The next night he said only one thing to me: that he had been serious about what he had said. He wanted to face the fact that we had failed to make a happy marriage. I had gone through the day as if he hadn’t said anything, so he had gauged my mood correctly. I still don’t understand how I did it, but I succeeded in pushing it down whenever it came to mind. He didn’t mention it the next night—he had hoped that I had begun to think, he said later—and the following night I thought I could bring up something else. I told him that I wanted to invite some people over. He said that if I thought I could outwait him, I was wrong. I had to come out of my dream, he said. We could do this in a way that would minimize the pain for both of us, or we could go through years of hurting and punishing each other for nothing. I don’t know, something snapped in me: I started calling him names and accusing him—I really don’t want to go much further with this. I did everything I could imagine to resist. I sulked, tried to act as if I was glad to be getting the chance to sleep with other men. Do I have to go on? He would never give me the opportunity to take it too far—at first. He would walk away from me. If I followed him to another room, he would get out of the house. It was obvious even to me that he was trying to control himself. I tried to get him to lose control, I guess because I thought it would make him feel ashamed. Finally I told him that I wouldn’t discuss anything until he told me why he wanted a divorce. He resisted—even that got ugly. I goaded him, calling him a coward and a sneak. At first it seemed as if he wanted to taunt me with the things he didn’t want to say. Then it all spilled out. He was no longer sure if he had ever loved me. If he felt again what he had felt for me when we had been married, he would not see it as a reason for marriage. I was possessive and jealous and my fear about my position with him dragged him down. I wasn’t capable of changing and he felt that any changes he wanted to make—within the marriage—had to be made uphill, against the resistance of my personality. I was so wrapped up in my own interests that I couldn’t recognize his efforts to make something of our marriage for what they were. I was not giving, and that made me a bitch. I sat there listening. He’d never said anything like it before. It was worse than the first shock. I couldn’t help thinking that they had to be true. When I could, I asked him for examples of what he meant—I insisted—and he had them, chapter and verse. Time after time when I didn’t take the initiative. Things I had missed when they had happened, other things that I couldn’t remember. He went all the way back to our courtship and the time that girl called and I overheard. I should have come out to the living room, he said. What could I answer to a thing like that? He was right, yes, that’s what I really should have done, but I didn’t think of it. I pull into my shell—that’s the way I was, the way I am today. It’s almost like attacking the color of my eyes.