Why this book exists
A focused place to understand what is happening
Xanthe has a second account. She is thirty-four, she is a hospital pharmacist, and she is extremely competent at a job in which a mistake is measured in milligrams. She has friends who love her. She ran a half marathon in April. And she has an account under a name that is not hers, with a picture of a plant, and at about eleven at night she looks at it, and she knows his gym schedule better than he does, and she has known for sixteen months that this is grotesque and she has not stopped. The relationship lasted two years and ended over a year ago, and here is what she says, always, with a particular flat bitterness: it wasn't even good.
The writing is designed to reduce shame, bring the underlying pattern into view and give you practical ways to respond without pretending that every life follows the same formula.
