It occurs to me that I crave independence, that I demand and expect it, but never enough, since I was a teenager, to actually be alone. It’s possible that, just as marriage conceals its true nature through the elaborate ritual of the wedding, I have been staging this entire production to hide from myself some reality about my life. If I object to the wife’s diminishment for the same reason that I object to the bride’s glorification, maybe this reason is much simpler and more obvious than I’ve imagined: I don’t want to be diminished, and I do want to be glorified—not in one shining moment, but
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