Burden explores male entitlement in traditional domestic arrangements. Her primary example is her husband, James, who left the family abruptly after over two decades of marriage. When James declared that he did not want custody of their three children, Burden saw his decision as wholly selfish: “This was not just an affair. This was not just a rejection of me. He was abandoning all of it, and all of us” (13). Burden describes the dynamic of her marriage as a severe power imbalance. James had complete authority over their home life. A “compliant person generally” (16), Burden readily deferred to James in all matters, accepting his controlling nature as his way of caring for her and the children. However, James’s dictatorial approach was revealed to be a way to gratify his own desires, not to protect his family. Burden uses James’s behavior to expose how men socialized to value patriarchal assumptions about heterosexual marriage assume the right to do whatever they please and face few repercussions.

Burden avoids attacking her ex-husband’s character, which allows her to instead critique the system that produced James. Burden connects her experience to the marriages of her and James’s parents. Parallels between these couples’ dynamics add nuance.