What I’ve Read: The Secret Lives of Wives: Women Share What It Really Takes to Stay Married by Iris Krasnow
I’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about this book and decided to read it. Deciding whether to review it here on my blog presented more of a quandary for me. Maybe it was the sensitive subject matter or maybe it’s the fact that I’ve been married for so little time that I feel unqualified to say whether the book has merit, but whatever the reason, I was hesitant about reviewing it here.
Let me take whether the recommendations in the book are valid out of sight and mind for a moment and address the interest factor: namely, this book is very interesting. It has many real-life case studies to examine and takes a stance on marriage that few books have. For that alone, the book is worth a read because it will hold your attention and provoke new thoughts about what marriage entails and what about it is worth “saving.”
The overall point that stuck in my head after reading this book—and whether this is something the author wanted to highlight, I don’t know—is that every marriage is intensely personal and dependent on individual factors that cannot necessarily work out of context in the case of another couple. In other words, what works for one couple may be completely ridiculous for another. What makes one woman happy may not satisfy another. That should be obvious to most people, I should think, but I got the distinct feeling reading this book that some people will read this—and other marriage books—and come to the conclusion that a case study will apply to them just because they share a common trait, that they are married.
From my perspective, this book was more interesting on a voyeuristic level. I liked reading about how other couples resolved conflict and interacted and compared it to the way that I resolve conflict and interact within my own marriage. Would I say this book is a road map—or even a book filled with practical advice? No, but then again, that’s not how I chose to read it. I can see how someone could pick up this book and view it as a step-by-step instruction guide on having a successful marriage, regardless of their own personal context. Personally, I think that’s a potentially dangerous and disappointing thing to do, but I know that it’s not uncommon.
One last thing: I took issue with the fact that this book seems to advocate both directly and indirectly for “saving” a marriage no matter what. It presents case studies that support this, bolsters that argument by showing how some couples have recovered after going through what seemed like relationship ending crises, etc. But, I think it’s irresponsible to hold such an example up as an ideal for “really staying married” and don’t think that the way some of these “happy endings” were portrayed seem happy in the slightest. I saw that a few reviewers on Amazon agreed with me, saying that some women seemed resigned to stay in the marriage “just because” and it was more of a prison sentence than a partnership. Yes, the country’s divorce rate is high, but I don’t think a viable solution to avoiding divorce is refusing to acknowledge real problems because it might be uncomfortable to do so. I’m young, so maybe I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, but I have family and I have friends and I have eyes and ears, so I’ve had an opportunity to see relationships start and end and evaluate why that might be. In the end, I think, no relationship, whether it be with a spouse, friend, lover or coworker or anyone, is worth sacrificing personal happiness for. The people you CHOOSE to have in your life—excluding family members and in-laws, which are inherited—should challenge you and contradict you sometimes, but they should not make you unhappy. If they make you unhappy and diminish your quality of life, try to have the courage to see the option of leaving them behind. You don’t necessarily have to take the option, but just knowing it is there may change the way you interact with them and may spur momentum to either fix things or choose to not fix them.
Anyway, that’s where I’m at after reading this book. Do you have any thoughts to share?
