Heart of the Matter

by Emily Giffin

It was the day she received her first bonus check at her law firm, a reward for billing two thousand hours—a small fortune she had planned to spend on everyday creature comforts. After the towels, she ordered Austrian goose-down pillows, sateen sheets, cashmere cable-knit throws, heavy cast-iron cookware, and fine china for twelve—quality domestic goods that most women acquire when they marry, before they buy a house or have a baby. She was doing it backward, maybe, but she was doing it all by herself. Who needs a man? she thought with every item she added to her cart.

As she shoveled the driveway in the winter, watered grass seed in the spring, pressure-washed their front porch in the summer, raked leaves in the fall. As she did all the things to make a home and a life for Charlie. She was self-sufficient, self-reliant, self-contained. She was every empowered lyric that she heard on the radio: I am woman, hear me roar . . . I will survive . . . R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

that I start to blame myself for our fight—which is always something of a relief, if only because it puts you back in control of your own life.

The second the words are out, I feel intense relief, almost as if confronting my fears and saying them aloud makes them less likely to be true.

She knows in her heart that it doesn’t work like this. That misfortune doesn’t give you the right to disregard others, ignore the rules, tell lies and half-truths.

It’s not worth the downside. She wonders what fool ever said that it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all—she has never disagreed with something so much.

wants to be the kind of person who can bestow unearned kindness on another, replace bitterness with empathy, forgive only for the sake of forgiving.

That it always takes two. For relationships to work, for them to break apart, for them to be fixed.

I think of how each person in a marriage owes it to the other to find individual happiness, even in a shared life. That this is the only real way to grow together, instead of apart.

“Life can be tough. And monotonous . . . and exhausting. And it’s not the romantic ride you think it’s going to be when you start out, in the beginning . . . But that doesn’t mean . . . that doesn’t give anyone the right .