Emily Stimpson Chapman’s podcast offered an explanation as to why people claim to like Harrison Scott Key’s “How to Stay Married.” When I read the book, I was baffled how anyone could, but so many people claimed this was “the best” book about marriage that some more digging was in order.
I had no intention of writing further on this subject, but it does seem to capture the zeitgeist, inspiring ardent fans. But why? I recently came across a cynical and sad expression of what many people perceive as the core purpose of Christian marriage; an anguished wife proclaimed that “marriage is meant to make us holy, not happy.” How dismal. And this does beg the question: Are holy people unhappy?
But why do people like “How to Stay Married”? Some people find it funny and think that it articulates accurately the struggles of marriage. I would agree to a point. So many people have proclaimed that they found his writing “funny” that I must accept I am the one with a deficit. The humor was lost on me. One thing I can say is if the book is, indeed, “funny” and I am just too unfunny to appreciate it, it certainly was not lighthearted. Who could write a lighthearted book about infidelity? Well, who could write a “funny” one?
Stimpson Chapmen and her cohosts assert that Key’s narrative will somehow prepare or help married couples “who are struggling.” Will it?
Key and his wife did successfully stay married thus far. Is that the goal of marriage, though? Are we merely not getting divorced? If we do not aspire to more will we ever receive more?
Does marriage preparation need more emphasis on the struggles and real-world examples? Lauren had a rough go of it coming of age with a philandering father who abandoned the family and a mother who died of cancer. People repeat often that Key’s book does not try to justify Lauren’s infidelity. But doesn’t it? At no point that I recall (granted I flew through the book at lightning speed to escape the gloom of unnecessary misery) does Lauren take accountability fully for her actions or does Key allow her to. It’s all “her parents really hurt her,” “she was really lonely,” “she was hurting.” All true. Ruminating on these truths will also not let you climb out of a pit of self-loathing and despair. Do engaged couples really need to know that some hurting stranger cheated on her husband? Is that helpful?
There are, demonstrably, many people who have done more with less. On the one hand, as they say, “hard is hard.” If someone is struggling with the circumstances of his life, it’s not for us to compare his difficulties to others and minimize them. However, living in difficult circumstances does not excuse poor choices, though they may mitigate the culpability. Importantly, the immoral or illogical action is not a necessary result of difficult circumstances. It’s far more interesting and instructive to look at the details of someone’s life who has overcome difficulty, the spouse who, despite interior pain and difficulty, chose to stay and chose to try, however imperfectly.
In Stimpson Chapman’s interview with Key I was struck by two disturbing facts. Key describes the process of writing the book as emotionally devastating. He would be writing, revisiting painful episodes from their unhappy marriage and return to his home. Simply by his demeanor, his wife would, according to Key, recognize that he had been plumbing the depths of sad memories. What a strange exercise in self-flagellation. And we are to believe that his wife, redeemed by the glaring light of exposure, is on board with this, no second thoughts or ambivalent feelings. Interesting.
Second, Key shared that upon publication of the book, he was continually harassed by other people’s marital crises and felt deeply, darkly depressed for a prolonged period. Mirroring is one of the most fundamental principles in human communication, indeed animal communication of any kind. If you lead with waving your wife’s soiled underpants from the roof of your suburban home, you cannot be surprised when people in distress from all over the world get in touch to do the same. I was saddened and disturbed by Key’s description of his anguish following the book’s publication. I thought it shouldn’t have been published and, apparently he was in such acute distress at one point that even he agreed with me.
But don’t people need to know about suffering? Yes, but not with such inappropriate specificty. I have never met Lauren. I have no right to know about the weeks she betrayed her marriage vows and abandoned her family to mope around a garage apartment a couple streets away from her family home and moon over an unemployed guy. You can convince me of the difficulty of marriage without sharing these intimate and undeserved details of someone else’s private life.
What’s the solution? The real “best book about marriage” is a work of fiction. Sigrid Undset’s “Kristin Lavransdatter” will convince you thoroughly just how miserable and difficult some marriages can be. You will meet not just one dysfunctional couple but many over a lifetime of successes and failures, mistakes and painful miscommunications. Oh, there is infidelity arguably inspired by childhood trauma no less than Lauren’s (though fat chance that man is getting a pass based on his personal pain). You have a keen sense that Undset, with her unconventional living arrangements over the years, experienced firsthand some of the emotional turmoil she portrays. But you could never say precisely which.
Same goes for books like Wallace Stegner’s “Crossing to Safety.” You are strapped into a front row seat to multiple marriages through good times and bad, a whole lifetime, not just a few years. In other words, fiction is a great way to learn with all the intensity ever required about difficulty and suffering without the author flashing all the neighbors. Is “How to Stay Married” making marriages better? There’s lots of talk about how his raw honesty is walking people back from the brink of divorce. Maybe I’m the outlier, but I want so much more than that for people. There are so many stories of people who survived coming close to divorce and learned to fall deeply in love again, to enjoy the experience of growing in marriage. I’ve yet to see the evidence that Harrison Scott Key enjoys his marriage. Not everyone will have a great marriage, it’s true, but accepting prematurely that marriage will never get better precludes the possibility. Life is difficult. Love, expressed through self-sacrifice, is the balm to weary souls.
