It’s a ruthlessly easy trap to fall into. When our son was first born I was so overwhelmed by the physical and mental toll , I felt like I had to shrink my world and focus my attention and energy only on him. The natural relationship for me to cut back was the one with my husband. And yet, it was our love for each other that had created this helpless new person. Making time for each other away from the baby, whether it was traveling to cities we’d always wanted to go to before kids, sneaking in an episode of Love Island, or even just having our morning coffee together while the baby still slept gave me a renewed sense of love for him. Because, despite Waldman’s incendiary line about loving her husband more, what she was really alluding to was the suffocation she felt within the confines of the motherhood ideal. She didn’t see herself as free of sexual desire or longing for her partner, and more importantly, she didn’t feel bad about it. That shedding of guilt was perhaps the most inflammatory part of her essay for some.