For Annie, that moment symbolized how her husband seemed not to have her back. It made her angry, and it turned her into a drill sergeant. When he returned home from the ski trip, she greeted him with a list of jobs that needed doing. “Choose five and you’ll do them,” she said. “You do them well, and you do them on time.” (Whenever I hear anyone describe a middle-aged woman as a shrew or a nag, I wonder what sort of ski-slope phone call may have figured in the situation.) Annie and her husband went to therapy, and Annie says there the male therapist tried to explain to her that her husband’s
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