Grown-up Marriage: What We Know, Wish We Had Known, and Still Need to Know About Being Married - Hardcover

Viorst, Judith

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743210808 ISBN 13: 9780743210805

Publisher: Free Press, 2002

Synopsis

In a grown-up marriage the laughter exceeds the regret. In a grown-up marriage we've learned to forgive and forget. Well, maybe not forget. In a grown-up marriage we do not keep score -- at least, not out loud. Although marriage is for grown-ups, very few of us are grown up when we marry. What is a grown-up marriage? Can we achieve one? Here, from the bestselling author of Suddenly Sixty and Necessary Losses comes her best ever -- a life-affirming book on the difficulties and possibilities of being well and enduringly wed. For years, hundreds of thousands of readers have enjoyed Judith Viorst's poetry and prose on the challenging, sometimes hilarious subject of marriage. Now, in this thought-provoking new book, she helps married couples of every age and stage figure out how they might create a grown-up marriage. Blending interviews of married women and men with the findings of couples therapists, the truths offered by literature and the movies, and a bemused exploration of her own marriage, Viorst illuminates the issues couples struggle with from "I do" to "till death do us part." She examines marital rivalry, marital manners, marital sex (not always with the person to whom we're married), fighting and apologies, and the boredom and the bliss of ordinary everyday married life. All aspects of marriage -- from the early years when we wonder "Who is this person?" and "What am I doing here?" to divorcing or almost divorcing, marrying again, growing older and old together -- are explored with honesty, humanity, and humor, with a rueful recognition of how tough it is to be married and -- if we can make it -- how precious it is. Viorst's insights into what it takes to stay married -- a commitment to preserve and defend our marriage against all attacks, including our own; the recognition that courtesy and charm, like charity, begin at home; the honoring of each other's good intentions and good will, even when we don't get what we need; the adaptations and compromises; the just plain dumb luck and the hard, hard work -- have something to offer everyone, even the most abidingly married among us. Fascinating, funny, and perceptive, Viorst's Grown-up Marriage will enrich the lives of all her readers.

About this title

Review:

In Grown-Up Marriage, bestselling author Judith Viorst uses her abundant gifts to consider how marriage pulls, cajoles, and commands us to grow up. By viewing marriage "as a problem we have to solve again and again," Viorst offers a fresh view of both the mirages of marriage and how readers can adjust their expectations to create an enduring state of the union. Complacency, warns Viorst, is the bind that unties. "If we imagine that marriage is where we can burp, bitch, snicker and snipe day after day without paying a price, we are wrong." She crafts a smart synthesis of decades of psychological research, case studies, and examples drawn from popular culture. Viorst rounds up the usual suspects--the routines that kill marriage, the outlaw in-laws, the mommy-daddy trap--and the unusual ones, including marital sibling rivalry and why second marriages often fail. Each subject is illuminated with nuanced, mirthful details about creating a mature marriage. Her insights are sometimes diluted with too many expert quotes or her own poetry. Still, her shrewd observations will make this book required reading before your next anniversary. --Barbara Mackoff

About the Author:

Judith Viorst is the bestselling author of Suddenly Sixty, Forever Fifty, Necessary Losses, and several other books. She is also the author of sixteen children's books, including the classic Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.

She was born and brought up in New Jersey, graduated from Rutgers University (and, later, from the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute), lived in Greenwich Village -- where she worked as a garment-district model, unappreciated secretary, and children's book editor -- and has spent the last forty-two years in Washington, D.C., after marrying Milton Viorst, a political writer. (They have achieved the almost-impossible: working in adjoining offices at home and eating three meals a day together for most of those years.) They have three married-with-children sons -- Anthony, a lawyer; Nick, in law school; and Alexander, who does community development lending at a bank. They also have, so far, four grandchildren: Miranda, Brandeis, Olivia, and Nathaniel.

About this edition

• Publisher: Free Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0743210808
• ISBN 13: 9780743210805
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304