By then, she says, she was so beaten down as a person she felt as if there was nothing left, a husk of skin and bone with no spirit, no agency of her own, only a kind of slow, painful slog toward unconsciousness. And yet, at the same time, she felt if she could only help him see himself through her eyes, he’d change, become the person she’d always felt him capable of being. It’s a common narrative. Women are given the message over and over that we are the holders of the emotional life and health of the family, that the responsibility for a man to change lies, in fact, with us. “The only way
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