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Three weeks after my wife told me she was having an affair, I decided to buy a pair of new pants. For a functional adult under normal circumstances, this wouldn't be much of an event, but I'd never been able to buy much of anything for myself—and all kinds of everyday actions had recently taken on layers of meaning. The last time I could remember buying my own pants had been in an emergency, when I discovered a rip in the seat of some raggedy khakis at work.