We were both, of course, products of how we’d been raised. Barack had experienced marriage as ephemeral: His mother had married twice, divorced twice, and in each instance managed to move on with her life, career, and young children intact. My parents, meanwhile, had locked in early and for life. For them, every decision was a joint decision, every endeavor a joint endeavor. In thirty years, they’d hardly spent a night apart. What did Barack and I want? We wanted a modern partnership that suited us both. He saw marriage as the loving alignment of two people who could lead parallel lives but
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