Key’s wife wakes up one day and tells him that she wants a divorce because she’s in love with their neighbor, Chad and has been having an affair with him for years. He is stunned because Chad’s wife and his wife have been friends for years and their children used to play together, and they have each other over all the time. This revelation kickstarts the insane years to come in their lives. It’s one thing after another and the waves just kept coming and knocking them down.
I was so torn reading this book. I think people take back cheating spouses all the time but when someone comes out and admits that their spouse cheated and they took him/her back, they’re met with a lot of shame and scorn. The number for infidelity in marriages is not looking good. I tried to verify the claim in this book that 1 out of every 4 couples experience infidelity in their relationship. I could not find an exact number that corroborates this exact claim but every number I could find was alarmingly high. So, somebody has to be lying. People are taking back cheating spouses all the time; they’re just not talking about it or they’re not in the public eye enough for it to matter.
Harrison decides to write about his marriage in a glaringly honest way. He is transparent about having the feelings so many of us think good and Christian people don’t. He talks about the break down and buildup of his marriage without being voyeuristic about it. Marriage is brutal and he wants to show you exactly how brutal it is to make a vow to be with someone for the rest of your life. Even his pastor reminded him that he can divorce her if he wants and assured him that it was sanctioned by the Bible, but he chose to fight for his marriage.
This is exactly what I’m torn about. I do not think these kinds of marriages should be fought for and I worry that a lot of people are going to read this book and decide to stick it out in terrible marriages because of this book. Also, they haven’t had years of distance from these events so who’s to say that this marriage is even going to actually go the distance. Are they going to come back in a couple of years and tell us they’re divorcing? I’m not convinced that they won’t. A lot of fighting for this marriage just seems like Harrison is doing all of it and the actual cheater is demanding a lot of things to decide to stay.
I also had to check my internalized misogynistic self and ask myself if this was a book written by a woman who took back a cheating man would I be more okay with that? There’s nothing in this book that I haven’t heard and seen men get away with in marriages and still stay married without me even blinking an eye. It’s almost like I expect men to act that way but when a woman has the audacity to step out of her marriage without being penalized for it, I suddenly feel uncomfortable reading it?
Harrison also talks about all his faults in the marriage. Honestly, I can’t imagine being married to him. He’s a humorist writer and has an amazing sense of humor but a lot of it was at the expense of his wife and a lot of it was mean. I don’t like mean humor especially in romantic situations. He rarely helped out around the house and basically let his wife do everything related to their children. I appreciate him being able to do the internal work and not stand there and say, “I am the perfect suffering husband married to this whore of a woman!”
Anyway, this is one of the most thought-provoking books I’ve read all year. I gave it 5 stars on Goodreads. If you read it, I’d like to know your thoughts.
Leggy
TwoNightStands 