For twenty years, my wife and I kept an even-split marriage, honoring our agreement to keep our finances separate and stay out of each other’s business. Her family gave her five apartments, and I never asked a thing about it. But when my father was critically ill and admitted to the ICU, she went on vacation in Europe. Citing our fifty-fifty agreement, she refused to pay his medical bills and wouldn’t come home. What had seemed like an equal marriage for twenty years ultimately amounted to nothing but cold calculation. In that moment, I finally woke up: affection in a marriage can never be measured in a ledger.
