https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/07/16/the-crane-wife/?fbclid=IwAR28BKY6E5enNEUQLstp_kDmx0I7BOaHMeAO41yLevYBym4HpeU9pYSUm2A

I need you to know: I hated that I needed more than this from him. There is nothing more humiliating to me than my own desires. Nothing that makes me hate myself more than being burdensome and less than self-sufficient. I did not want to feel like the kind of nagging woman who might exist in a sit-com. These were small things, and I told myself it was stupid to feel disappointed by them. I had arrived in my thirties believing that to need things from others made you weak. I think this is true for lots of people but I think it is especially true for women. When men desire things they are “passionate.” When they feel they have not received something they need they are “deprived,” or even “emasculated,” and given permission for all sorts of behavior. But when a woman needs she is needy. She is meant to contain within her own self everything necessary to be happy. That I wanted someone to articulate that they loved me, that they saw me, was a personal failing and I tried to overcome it.