Review: How to Stay Married
Reviewed by Jennifer Gingras
Summary
The book recounts Key’s tumultuous journey following the discovery that his wife, Lauren, was having an affair with a family friend.
Despite the profound betrayal, Key chooses to fight for his marriage rather than seek divorce. This decision leads him through a series of humorous yet heart-wrenching events, as he confronts his shortcomings and embarks on a quest for faith and forgiveness.
Throughout this journey, Key learns that love requires unwavering commitment, resilience, and a deep sense of humor.
Review
I will forever be moved by this book and the courage the author took in sharing his story with such vulnerability and humor. I rarely laugh out loud while reading but Key had me both laughing and crying in equal measure. His honest reflections helped paint a story and showed his struggle with healing from his wife’s affair, struggle with his faith in the aftermath of her affair, and finding a new path forward together.
Read this book if you have ever been in a relationship, know someone in a relationship, or thought about being in a relationship. Read this book if you have struggled with your faith, your life, or your choices. Read this book if you have been wrecked by infidelity, wrecked others with infidelity, or loved someone affected by infidelity. Read this book.
Quotes
“Every marriage is a partnership of two broken assholes with good intentions and varying degrees of ability to deliver.”
“Love is never a bad call. It might seem impossible. It might even seem silly when every atom in your body screams for blood. But how else, other than with love, can a broken thing be made whole again?”
“What if marriage, at its very best, exists to remake us into beautiful new creatures we scarcely recognize? What if, in some cosmically weird way, escaping a hard marriage is not how you change? What is staying married is?”
“That is marriage, in the end: two of you, being you, warring against the worst parts of you, making space for the best to grow, and learning to see that some parts of your spouse are not your favorite, and letting those parts be anyway. Hating those parts is no grounds for divorce. The only thing worth divorcing, in most cases, is the hatred itself, and your inborn desire to shape the world to your will like some kind of Marvel villain.”
“It would take me years to understand this, but the understanding began in that church hallway, that a good person is a temporary and imaginary creature, as make-believe as unicorns and fire-breathing cows, because the best of us are often the worst, full of proud and viperous snakes, believing ourselves gods. The dragons did not just live in history and myth. They lived inside me.”
“The memories do not dissolve. They cohere into captivating art films that play endlessly in the International Infidelity Film Festival of my mind.”
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