Happy Anniversary, Caroline!

And a marriage book recommendation not for the faint of heart

June 12, 2004 (Durham, NC)

I find myself in the strange position of having recently published a book full of personal stories but also not wanting to overly share family details in public venues. I haven’t quite figured out the right balance, but this week I am erring on the personal side as Caroline and I celebrate twenty years of marriage.

As I wrote in the acknowledgements of Learning to Disagree:

Caroline, I am sorry it took me so long to get you a book dedication, but I’m glad it’s this one. You have walked with me through some of the highs and lows of my own disagreements—often with others and occasionally with you—and you have shown me how to navigate them with humor, love, and grace.

Caroline has helped me navigate not only disagreements but the rest of life, too. Marriage has been both good and challenging; sometimes wonderful and exciting, and sometimes painful or boring. And it’s been a process of learning. As my friend Tish Harrison Warren wrote a few years ago:

I don’t know if I truly loved my husband when we got married or if I even knew what love was. But I know that we are learning to love each other with each passing day and that there is profound joy in that messy process.

While I’m on the topic of marriage and oversharing, I’ll recommend Harrison Scott Key’s gripping memoir, How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told. Key is a gifted writer and extremely funny. His book is also a painful read—it’s full of awkward, broken, and honest narratives that do not resolve with perfect endings. As Jane Smiley writes in her Washington Post review of Key’s book:

I thought it would be a how-to manual and rolled my eyes. I was sure that a book like that would be the last thing that I or any of my exes would be interested in. But no, this is a memoir, shot through with sharp humor. That’s better, though still I wondered: Do I really care about 300 pages on some stranger’s marriage? It turns out I did.

Like many good books, How to Stay Married takes readers to deeper reflections about their own hopes, dreams, and insecurities. Key also speaks bluntly about the reality of marriage and the people who comprise it:

One of your greatest misconceptions, the one you must jettison as soon as is convenient to you, is that you’re easy to live with. You’re not. You’re a monster. Marriage reveals this to you, though you’d prefer to blame your partner, your parents, SCOTUS. Their monstrousness is so much easier to see.

Yet for all of its complexity, sadness, and confusion, How to Stay Married also points toward a powerful antidote to the selfishness that plagues our relationships: grace.

Thanks, Caroline, for showing me lots of grace over the past twenty years!