“It would be easy to say that this story, in which a woman confuses her choice of a partner with her choice of an identity, is ridiculous, of another era. How awful, we might say, that in 1940, we still thought of women’s identities in this way. Boys, boys, boys! How silly for a woman to put so much stock in men, to speak of them so much! Why not f

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“For years I conflated tastes with identity, with depth. I pretended this was a compatibility issue, but the reality is that I was threatened by men’s tastes because I assumed they would have to become mine. By this same warped logic, I dated people whose interests I did not share but aspired to. I loved people who were more outdoorsy than me. Peop

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