How to Stay Married

 Book 29 of my 2025 Reading Challenge

read from March 4 - 10

How to Stay Married: the Most Insane Love Story Every Told 

by Harrison Scott Key

published 2023

Summary (via Goodreads)

One gorgeous autumn day, Harrison discovers that his wife—the sweet, funny, loving mother of their three daughters, a woman “who’s spent just about every Sunday of her life in a church”—is having an affair with a family friend. This revelation propels the hysterical, heartbreaking action of How to Stay Married , casting our narrator onto “the factory floor of hell,” where his wife was now in love with a man who “wears cargo shorts, on purpose.” What will he do? Kick her out? Set fire to all her panties in the yard? Beat this man to death with a gardening implement? Ask God for help in winning her back?

Armed with little but a sense of humor and a hunger for the truth, Harrison embarks on a hellish journey into his past, seeking answers to the riddles of faith and forgiveness. Through an absurd series of escalating confessions and betrayals, Harrison reckons with his failure to love his wife in the ways she needed most, resolves to fight for his family, and in a climax almost too ridiculous to be believed, finally learns that love is no joke. 

My Opinion

3 stars

I added this book to my 'to-read' list after seeing it in Bookpage.

First, I had to check my unintentional bias.  I realized women write about their unfaithful husbands all the time so when this book, written by a man about his unfaithful wife, generated a bigger reaction in me than usual before I'd even started it, I had to stop and sit with it.  From the beginning it felt more monumental and I shouldn't have assumed that but also, after reading it, the starts and stops were a roller coaster no matter the gender.

Second, I always have a love/hate relationship with memoirs because everyone has the right to tell their own story, and I obviously read them, but I also feel empathy for the others in their lives who didn't have a choice about being written about.  So I take a second to think of the real people in this book.

Third, I actually read the book.  If I had been his friend watching him go through this, it would've been tough to see him continually forgive her as she actively continued betraying him but also, if I had been her friend I would've had sympathy that any grievances she felt about him became inconsequential in the jury of public opinion because of crossing the line of infidelity.

I feel kind of icky after reading it.