Why I’m glad my parents got a divorce

My parents had to get divorced. That was the conclusion I drew as a 13-year-old, possessed of the kind of fiery certainty that only teenage girls and political zealots can muster. I had begun to observe how other people’s parents were together, and saw that my parents in no way functioned as a couple.

More troubling still, my lively-minded, creative mother was a different person in the presence of my father—she was cowed. The idea that me and…