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neni's review
emotional
funny
reflective
slow-paced
3.0
This book was interesting because it allowed me into the mind of someone with whom I disagree in a lot of ways. The way the author describes marriage, with all its trials and tribulations, was both fascinating and terrifying. I liked the writing style, while it wasn't super gripping, I think she struck a nice balance between personal stories, interviews and other materials, even if the themes were very much biased towards a "pro-marriage" way of thinking. Still, it's a book about marriage so I can't exactly fault her for that, but I would have liked to see some different perspectives on how maybe marriage isn't for everyone, or how it can be a negative experience.
As far as the content itself, there were parts I scoffed at (at one point she uses her son playing Minecraft with his friends as an analogy for letting people "into your universe" or whtv, and I mean really?), parts I expected (there were a lot of religious references, which makes sense, considering marriage is a big deal in most religions and even though she never explicitly talked about her faith, I could tell she's one of those "modern christian" types; not a bad thing, but the writing definitely shows it) and parts I really disagreed with. I feel like she really pushes the "marriage is a choice, staying married is a choice and all you need to do to stay married is not leave" agenda, which is at best extremely oversimplified and at worse really toxic and potentially dangerous for people (especially women) to internalize. There were so many stories of people describing feeling trapped and miserable and unhappy in a marriage and then the point was to stay "ah, but they stayed through all that, and now they're content and valuable because they're part of a couple". To me that's just more of society's bullshit narrative that marriage, romantic love and having kids is the ultimate, most worthy purpose of being human, which predictably really pissed me off. Like, I'm happy that she's happy with her marriage, but paiting it as some sort of end all be all of human existence is just irresponsible and naive.
If I had to describe this book to someone it would probably be "To stay married just don't leave and you'll most likely not have to die alone".
That said, I did find it interesting, like I said, and it helped that it was short.
As far as the content itself, there were parts I scoffed at (at one point she uses her son playing Minecraft with his friends as an analogy for letting people "into your universe" or whtv, and I mean really?), parts I expected (there were a lot of religious references, which makes sense, considering marriage is a big deal in most religions and even though she never explicitly talked about her faith, I could tell she's one of those "modern christian" types; not a bad thing, but the writing definitely shows it) and parts I really disagreed with. I feel like she really pushes the "marriage is a choice, staying married is a choice and all you need to do to stay married is not leave" agenda, which is at best extremely oversimplified and at worse really toxic and potentially dangerous for people (especially women) to internalize. There were so many stories of people describing feeling trapped and miserable and unhappy in a marriage and then the point was to stay "ah, but they stayed through all that, and now they're content and valuable because they're part of a couple". To me that's just more of society's bullshit narrative that marriage, romantic love and having kids is the ultimate, most worthy purpose of being human, which predictably really pissed me off. Like, I'm happy that she's happy with her marriage, but paiting it as some sort of end all be all of human existence is just irresponsible and naive.
If I had to describe this book to someone it would probably be "To stay married just don't leave and you'll most likely not have to die alone".
That said, I did find it interesting, like I said, and it helped that it was short.
Content Warnings
Minor: Animal death, Vomit, War, and Miscarriage
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