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readsewknit's review against another edition
4.0
In early 2020, I discovered Ada Calhoun through her stellar book Why We Can't Sleep, so when I recently read a recommendation for this short book of essays, I welcomed the opportunity to revisit her work.
This book is a reflection on marriage, particularly the pressure points couples are bound to face, told in the particulars of her own marriage. She titles it as she does because she is frank about the difficulties and temptations that a marriage can face, which aren't welcome at a wedding celebration but are worth pondering later. Calhoun not only addresses the hard, difficult moments and experiences but also what makes it worthwhile to commit to another.
Here are various excerpts I copied down after listening to the audiobook:
"Back then a labor and delivery nurse explained that breast milk starts out weak and sugary but turns less sweet and more filling; the baby gets dessert first. In marriage, too, I've begun to suspect the boring later phase nourishes more than the rapture of new love."
"Even if your choice is perfect, you will have to put all your faith in one person, and someone will put all their faith in you. That's a lot of pressure."
The hardest lesson in a marriage... is understanding the truth of the other person, believing in your heart that they are as real as you are, and their feelings matter as much."
"It reminds me of the saying, 'Feelings aren't facts.' Sometimes we can thank our feelings for sharing and ignore them. Maybe wanting doesn't have to perfectly coincide with getting. Maybe sometimes not getting has a value of its own. 'To crave and to have are as alike as a thing and its shadow,' wrote Marilynne Robinson in Housekeeping."
"Modern relationship sage Tyler Perry says that when we're married, we need to keep in mind the 80/20 rule. Our partner, he says, will give us 80 percent of what we want. When we look at other people, we see only that they have the other 20 percent. Of course, if we ever left our partner for that other person, we would again get only 80 percent of what we want, just a different 80 percent. New joys, new problems. And looking around, we would still see the missing 20 percent in other people."
"Marriage is a condition of being, not doing. Marriage is based on who we are with one another. Marriage lives and grows with grace. And without grace, marriage dies."
This book is a reflection on marriage, particularly the pressure points couples are bound to face, told in the particulars of her own marriage. She titles it as she does because she is frank about the difficulties and temptations that a marriage can face, which aren't welcome at a wedding celebration but are worth pondering later. Calhoun not only addresses the hard, difficult moments and experiences but also what makes it worthwhile to commit to another.
Here are various excerpts I copied down after listening to the audiobook:
"Back then a labor and delivery nurse explained that breast milk starts out weak and sugary but turns less sweet and more filling; the baby gets dessert first. In marriage, too, I've begun to suspect the boring later phase nourishes more than the rapture of new love."
"Even if your choice is perfect, you will have to put all your faith in one person, and someone will put all their faith in you. That's a lot of pressure."
The hardest lesson in a marriage... is understanding the truth of the other person, believing in your heart that they are as real as you are, and their feelings matter as much."
"It reminds me of the saying, 'Feelings aren't facts.' Sometimes we can thank our feelings for sharing and ignore them. Maybe wanting doesn't have to perfectly coincide with getting. Maybe sometimes not getting has a value of its own. 'To crave and to have are as alike as a thing and its shadow,' wrote Marilynne Robinson in Housekeeping."
"Modern relationship sage Tyler Perry says that when we're married, we need to keep in mind the 80/20 rule. Our partner, he says, will give us 80 percent of what we want. When we look at other people, we see only that they have the other 20 percent. Of course, if we ever left our partner for that other person, we would again get only 80 percent of what we want, just a different 80 percent. New joys, new problems. And looking around, we would still see the missing 20 percent in other people."
"Marriage is a condition of being, not doing. Marriage is based on who we are with one another. Marriage lives and grows with grace. And without grace, marriage dies."
denise_listens_04's review against another edition
4.0
This book was good. I liked her take on marriage and I agree with most of it. Marriage is about just not ever quitting. She definitely conveys that. This book was funny in spots as well.
ecs_etera's review against another edition
4.0
This book was astonishingly good. I will definitely recommend it to friends - and maybe poach parts of it for wedding toasts of the future.
nssutton's review against another edition
4.0
A gem of a book, cousin to Cheryl Strayed's Tiny Beautiful Things, which I read on my honeymoon. I am fascinated by marriage and love reading about it, as if each paragraph is an investment in my own. I love how Calhoun was spot on without being sentimental, on the highs and the lows (especially the lows).
smbcoffee's review against another edition
3.0
It was okay, just not really my thing. I had to push myself to finish it, and not because it didn’t contain useful gems. I liked her perspective on marriage, fidelity, and staying together despite many challenges, but I didn’t really love the delivery.
wordsmithreads's review against another edition
4.0
In December of 2017, I got engaged to someone I had been dating for three years. During the three year engagement, friends of mine got engaged, got married, some even had babies. I felt stalled, felt like I was working So Hard to make a square peg fit in a round hole. “Is it supposed to be this hard?” I asked myself. “Maybe this is just what being in a long-term relationship is like.”
Calling off my engagement made me feel like a failure, like I had fallen off the wagon while my other girlfriends had won the race. Calhoun cautions against this without knowing my story:
Marriage isn’t an achievement, the culmination of a love affair, but, rather, the announcement of an intention to live in a new way.
I’ve heard it before that marriage doesn’t really change anything, is just a legal piece of paper. I’ve thought the same. But Calhoun makes it clear, almost romanticizes (to the chagrin, most likely, of those against the institution) that being in a serious relationship is different (or at least should be) than being married:
Making a relationship official and public changes it. When you have witnesses from both families, each person’s tribe is on its own side, and when the couple walks back up the aisle after getting married, they’re like the pull tab on a zipper, merging the two sides into one family for the rest of human history.
Calhoun writes extensively about affairs, something I haven’t experienced in a relationship. She hammers home that marriage is not all love and sunshine: you will hate your spouse at some point in your life.
To be clear: relationships are work, but it shouldn’t feel like beating your head against a wall (at least not all the time). Calhoun paints a picture of marriage that I *can* get on board with: you will fall out of love with your person sometimes, but if you stick it out and it’s the right person, you can make it.
She writes:
Sex advice columnist Dan Savage says that everyone talks in their wedding vows about how they would “walk through fire” or “take a bullet” for each other without realizing that more often than not, the bullet and the fire is your spouse saying to you, “I have feelings for another person” or “I slept with someone else.” Many of us who have been through this would prefer a literal bullet to the metaphorical one.
I wholeheartedly believe in monogamy. I am greedy; I do not want to share. Calhoun likes it for a different reason:
That, for me, may be the most persuasive argument for monogamy: it lets you keep all your inside jokes in one place.
I will say, Calhoun writes about infidelity in a way that changed how I thought about it. Of course I don’t want to be on the receiving end of the news “I slept with someone else,” but I think it could potentially be weathered based on how Calhoun’s philosophies set it up. Because the alternative to infidelity is still being able to fall in love with other people:
And yet being happy with the same person forever requires finding ways to be happy with different versions of that person, and avoiding panic when the person you’re with becomes someone you dislike. Maybe you’ll enjoy the next person they become. Maybe the person you’re on your way to becoming will like this new partner better.
All in all, I think this should probably be required reading for those in long term relationships or who plan to get married. It’s not the most amazing thing I’ve ever read, but I laughed out loud at it and learned a lot from it.
A final quote:
“The hardest lesson in a marriage,” says my friend Asia, “is understanding the truth of the other person, believing in your heart that they are as real as you are, and their feelings matter as much. We all think that when something is wrong it will feel wrong to us, but that’s the biggest lie. So many things that your partner will see as betrayal will feel to you like nothing. One of the biggest challenges of marriage is to acknowledge that your own feelings aren’t the end of the story. We have to hold so many realities at once: here’s me, here’s you, here’s us, here’s the rest of the world.”
Calling off my engagement made me feel like a failure, like I had fallen off the wagon while my other girlfriends had won the race. Calhoun cautions against this without knowing my story:
Marriage isn’t an achievement, the culmination of a love affair, but, rather, the announcement of an intention to live in a new way.
I’ve heard it before that marriage doesn’t really change anything, is just a legal piece of paper. I’ve thought the same. But Calhoun makes it clear, almost romanticizes (to the chagrin, most likely, of those against the institution) that being in a serious relationship is different (or at least should be) than being married:
Making a relationship official and public changes it. When you have witnesses from both families, each person’s tribe is on its own side, and when the couple walks back up the aisle after getting married, they’re like the pull tab on a zipper, merging the two sides into one family for the rest of human history.
Calhoun writes extensively about affairs, something I haven’t experienced in a relationship. She hammers home that marriage is not all love and sunshine: you will hate your spouse at some point in your life.
To be clear: relationships are work, but it shouldn’t feel like beating your head against a wall (at least not all the time). Calhoun paints a picture of marriage that I *can* get on board with: you will fall out of love with your person sometimes, but if you stick it out and it’s the right person, you can make it.
She writes:
Sex advice columnist Dan Savage says that everyone talks in their wedding vows about how they would “walk through fire” or “take a bullet” for each other without realizing that more often than not, the bullet and the fire is your spouse saying to you, “I have feelings for another person” or “I slept with someone else.” Many of us who have been through this would prefer a literal bullet to the metaphorical one.
I wholeheartedly believe in monogamy. I am greedy; I do not want to share. Calhoun likes it for a different reason:
That, for me, may be the most persuasive argument for monogamy: it lets you keep all your inside jokes in one place.
I will say, Calhoun writes about infidelity in a way that changed how I thought about it. Of course I don’t want to be on the receiving end of the news “I slept with someone else,” but I think it could potentially be weathered based on how Calhoun’s philosophies set it up. Because the alternative to infidelity is still being able to fall in love with other people:
And yet being happy with the same person forever requires finding ways to be happy with different versions of that person, and avoiding panic when the person you’re with becomes someone you dislike. Maybe you’ll enjoy the next person they become. Maybe the person you’re on your way to becoming will like this new partner better.
All in all, I think this should probably be required reading for those in long term relationships or who plan to get married. It’s not the most amazing thing I’ve ever read, but I laughed out loud at it and learned a lot from it.
A final quote:
“The hardest lesson in a marriage,” says my friend Asia, “is understanding the truth of the other person, believing in your heart that they are as real as you are, and their feelings matter as much. We all think that when something is wrong it will feel wrong to us, but that’s the biggest lie. So many things that your partner will see as betrayal will feel to you like nothing. One of the biggest challenges of marriage is to acknowledge that your own feelings aren’t the end of the story. We have to hold so many realities at once: here’s me, here’s you, here’s us, here’s the rest of the world.”
sandhills_kt's review against another edition
4.0
Maybe everyone who is thinking of being married should read this.
Favourite Quotes:
“By staying married, we give something to ourselves and to others: hope. Hope that in steadfastly loving someone, we ourselves, for all our faults, will be loved; that the broken world will be made whole. To hitch your rickety wagon to the flickering star of another fallible human being -- what an insane thing to do. What a burden, and what a gift.”
“I want to say that at various points in your marriage, may it last forever, you will look at this person and feel only rage.”
“I’VE ALWAYS FOUND that parties are better on rainy nights. I think it’s because bad weather weeds out the ambivalent, the uncommitted. To leave the house in a storm, you must do the work of finding an umbrella or preparing yourself for a soaking. This requires faith that leaving your dry house will pay off, that you will travel through the cold, dark, unwelcoming night and end up somewhere better than where you left.”
Favourite Quotes:
“By staying married, we give something to ourselves and to others: hope. Hope that in steadfastly loving someone, we ourselves, for all our faults, will be loved; that the broken world will be made whole. To hitch your rickety wagon to the flickering star of another fallible human being -- what an insane thing to do. What a burden, and what a gift.”
“I want to say that at various points in your marriage, may it last forever, you will look at this person and feel only rage.”
“I’VE ALWAYS FOUND that parties are better on rainy nights. I think it’s because bad weather weeds out the ambivalent, the uncommitted. To leave the house in a storm, you must do the work of finding an umbrella or preparing yourself for a soaking. This requires faith that leaving your dry house will pay off, that you will travel through the cold, dark, unwelcoming night and end up somewhere better than where you left.”
emmaemooney's review against another edition
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
3.25
Nothing particularly extraordinary, but good essays to have on hold when your mind might be cluttered with “what if’s”