Thanksgiving took me and my marriage to the brink. Here’s how we came back from it

Brigid Schulte writes about the often infuriating gendered division of labor on the Better Life Lab Channel on Slate.

A few years ago, I spent most of Thanksgiving dividing up the furniture in the house for when the divorce came. My husband had just walked out the door with a six-pack of beer to hang out with a friend, leaving me with a kitchen explosion of vegetable peels and uncooked dishes, a scatter of recipes and cookbooks, a table yet to be set for 18, and one gigantic, raw bird. He could have that fucking blue-leather couch.

To say I was livid would be a gross understatement. Before we got married, we’d both promised each other we’d be partners and share our home responsibilities equally. As I furiously chopped Brussels sprouts, flung cranberries and miniature pumpkins on the table in a failed attempt at a Martha Stewart centerpiece, and jammed homemade stuffing into the turkey, my mind kept spinning: How had we gone so far off the rails?