We are afraid of dying alone, but no one really knows lonely better than a married woman sitting next to her silent husband. - Lyz Lenz

We make women feel brave for sticking it out. For keeping private all the screaming fights, the late nights, the broken cups on the floor, swept up in the morning. We make women feel like they are doing something right for persisting in the lonely drudgery of the American marriage, when the aftermath of the happily-ever-after of the heterosexual marriage is simply negotiating a relationship that is inherently unequal. A relationship made unequal not by accident, but as a function of a society that relies on that inequality to fill in the gaps that it refuses to fund — childcare, eldercare. We do not make women feel brave for making the opposite choice, for walking away from unhappiness.

Some women tell me how they trained their partners. Sure, they came rough and reluctant, but now they do the dishes without complaining. And they’ll cook dinner some nights. See? See. Maybe, they imply, if I had tried harder, worked harder, trained my husband, stayed miserable a little longer, I could have stayed married. As if that was the one thing I wanted to spend my time on — training a grown man like a horse.

Driving home to Iowa from Marion, Indiana, I went through Chicago, sure, but it was far easier to find a field than a town. Far easier to find empty spaces than people. Even in my town, Cedar Rapids, the second-largest city in Iowa, you are never more than minutes from a cornfield. It’s a bigness that can feel limiting if you are the only one of you that you see. But the internet is an equalizer — bringing together voices that once felt alone, realigning boundaries, creating spaces where there were none before.

There is a danger too of creating ideological bubbles. Of filtering out dissent. It’s a criticism that was leveled heavily against blue states after the 2016 election. But when you are in the minority — the voice that is silenced — you are never in a bubble, even if you try. And finding a place where you don’t have to fight for acceptance, where you can just be accepted, even if that is online is the difference between pain and hope.