The US presidents' wives are disobliging. I think I hear some excitement

How surprised were you when you realised Michelle Obama was not at Donald Trump's inauguration? Were you admiring? Perhaps you were taken aback or envious that she, like Melania Trump, has chosen when to be a professional wife.

- Susie Orbach

When, or rather, did the pleasure of being out and about with a partner fade for you? Did it wither into feeling just too much obligation? And was there a struggle to not show up for that funeral, that party, as a partner? For women I've seen in therapy, the struggle to act on that desire has been hard.

It seems subversive to generations of women (and men) to see a president devoid of his wife in public. The woman should be there. How can she be so brazen, stroppy or fearless? Yet when a woman can jump into that new space, it can be relieving and pleasing.

It's strange because even those of us who go about quite easily without partners can feel a twinge of irreverence seeing these women allowing themselves not to show up. That's because it is bred in our psychic bones. When we see such changes, they are not nothing. They are startling.