Marriage Confidential - Book Review
According to Pamela Haag, millions of husbands and wives are “troubled by a feeling that there is something in their marriage that doesn’t work, possibly cannot be made to work, and that it is not going to get any better.” Her new book, Marriage Confidential: The Post-Romantic Age of Workhorse Wives, Royal Children, Undersexed Spouses, and Rebel Couples Who Are Rewriting The Rules, unravels the thin foundation holding together today’s shaky marriage ideals to reveal a population of “melancholy” people stuck by their own accord in melancholy marriages.
This aptly termed melancholy marriage serves as the underlying theme in Haag’s book. More specifically, Haag explores the variety and degrees of melancholy that exist in today’s marriages, careful to differentiate them from the high-stress, “high-conflict marriage(s) which might involve abuse, violence, additions, fistfights, chronic arguments, projectile shoes and dishes, or other conspicuously dysfunctional habits that lead to divorce.” In contrast, the “low-conflict marriage is not, according to scholars, anywhere near “that bad.” The honorably intentioned, mutually agreeable people who find themselves mired in the scholar’s confection of the low-conflict, low-stress unhappy marriage struggle—often privately—with this dilemma: is this yearning “enough” of a reason to get divorced, or separated.”
Admittedly not an advice book, Marriage seeks to create an open conversation about marriage – one in which all those struggling with their melancholy feelings may realize they are not alone, and more importantly, that they have options beyond divorce. “The remarkable thing in all of this,” Haag writes, “is that we don’t try to change Marriage instead. Such institutional dysfunction isn’t really tolerated in the private sector. Divorce lawyer Raoul Felder marvels about marriage that “there is no product in the world (except perhaps commercial Xerox machines) that has a 50 percent breakdown rate, and is still in business”.”
Drawing inspiration from her own sense of marital ambivalence, Haag describes couples who are rewriting marriage rules to suit their relationships. Haag writes of couples with successful open marriages; couples that swing; and couple’s that cheat, all the while reserving judgment, for her goal is lead us to the realization that we can change marriage to suit our relationships rather than change our relationships to conform to an antiquated marriage ideal. While she neither advocates for nor condemns how couple’s choose to organize their marriages, she does make a strong care for change: “Sometimes the preservation of the traditional marriage (to say nothing of a spouse’s humanity) requires the demolition of traditional marriage…”
Haag’s personal investment in the topic gives Marriage Confidential persuasive power, and her thorough research embarks on a fascinating journey through the evolution of marriage, leading readers to examine and reevaluate their marriage beliefs.
