Why Stay Married?

When a book I was reading scared my son

Last weekend, under the blur of a Saturday afternoon where everyone had melted into some corner of the house, I sat reading in the living room engrossed in a book with a matte black finish and a title in stark block white lettering emblazoned across the front: How To Stay Married. Quinn came into the room, plopped down on a chair in front of me, and while I continued to read, he suddenly bellowed out in an anxious voice, “MOM, WHY ARE YOU READING THAT? You don’t need to read that!!”

I had to quickly explain to him that I was reading a memoir, not a how-to book. That it was someone’s story, explained by the subtitle: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told, which admittedly was a lot harder to read in its transparenty cool font.

He calmed down, I think. I laughed, and then felt that pang that you feel when you get a glimpse of the worry that seems ready to ignite in an instant, or the pain that thank goodness you are not in danger of inflicting but also how easy it would be to devastate these kids lives.

This is one premise of the author’s story, as he shares the events that imploded his marriage, and all that he lived and worked through in the aftermath: is marriage worth fighting for? Are the kids worth staying married for? Is there something more to the marriage relationship than self-fulfillment… as in, when you are living in a world of pain, rejection, confusion, and hurt, do you leave?

One of the beauties of memoir is that it doesn’t have to explain all the possible scenarios and caveats while exploring these questions. The author is just telling their story, with their particular scenario and details and circumstances that may or may not relate exactly to yours. But the beauty of a well-done memoir, or a story that matters and is not purely self-aggrandizing or airing one’s grievances, is that you do find yourself on common ground in some way with their humanity: the struggles they go through, the questions they face, the unknowns they have to wrestle with, and truths that (do or don’t) guide them. Maybe most of their story doesn’t apply to you, and yet you still find yourself right there with them.

In How To Stay Married, Harrison Scott Key discovers that his wife of nearly twenty years is cheating on him with an old neighbor. She wants to leave him and start a new life with a guy in cargo shorts. They have three daughters in their tender middle grade years. As his life implodes, Harrison begins to journey through what becomes a years long roller coaster of grace and infidelity, forgiveness and internal reckoning, spiritual plummets and unexplainable faith, undoing and redoing and undoing again. I was honestly worried right up until the end, unsure what would happen.

It would be easy to read this memoir and, if you are queasy about language, write it off as offensive. I can understand. Normally, I find cursing to come across as immature and unnecessarily crude when better writing could get the job done. But in this case, it didn’t bother me and it seemed an almost necessary part of the author’s attempt at honesty. Here is a man reckoning with the worst parts of himself, the parts that led to the imploding of his marriage. And the worst parts of his wife, the parts that lead him to the brink of despair about love and life and family and faith. So I will allow the man his curse words.

It would also be easy to read this memoir as just another comedic writer (because this man is FUNNY) using his humor to lighten the load around his heartbreaking story— and wonder why he aired all he and his wife’s dirty laundry in the first place. I think he answers this throughout in the question that lingers through each horrific event: why stay married? why fight for this? And the answers he discovers are not what our modern day prophets preach.

At one poignant part of the story, Harrison is trying to find support in the church he and his family have been attending for several years. The history to their attendance in this particular denomination is fully explained, and yet the cracks start to show as Harrison begins to notice how the upper crust theology and the pride surrounding it are more important that the people it’s meant to minister to. He goes to the pastor asking what to do about his wife’s affair, which she is still engaged in. The advice he receives is along the lines of “we could discipline her,” or “we could excommunicate her.” Both of which Harrison feels at some deep level, would do no good in actually reaching his wife who is too far gone in her own destruction. She wouldn’t care, he thinks. At some deep level he intuitively knows he needs to pursue a path of mercy and forgiveness, and had hoped to find help from the pastor. But instead, cold judgment. So he leaves.

It is the voice of an Anglican friend who says, “fight for her,” and three men with big hearts and boots-to-the-ground faith who come alongside him. “I needed these men in my life,” he writes. “I needed people who would show compassion and speak the opposite of fantasy and vengeance.”

“Darkness was all around, but hope, too. Serious people of faith talk about spiritual warfare, this trippy idea that angels and demons do battle around us. I encountered many angels and demons in that season. What the demons said, via blogs and TED talks and occasionally at hotel bars while I traveled for work, was “You deserve to be happy.”

The demons said, “To hell with her.”

The angels, “Love her.”

The demons said, “Let her die.”

The angels said, “If anybody dies, let it be you.”

If you want your marriage to survive, you need people in your life who believe in the idea of it. My believers were the men and women who listened and wept and moaned with me and brought beers and cigarettes to my driveway and said, “God likes to work on broken things.”

The rest of the story is an unflinching look at the many ways the choice to fight for something like your marriage can both completely obliterate you, and yet save your life.

The astounding thing about Harrison Scott Key’s story is that he was somehow drawn to, and propelled by a belief about how humans work that is completely upside down from the cultural message that he (and we) eat, live, and breathe. Instead of saying, this is my moment to look within and find who I really am, to follow my truth, to be released from whatever prison of pain or desire or frustration I have been living with, he looks to a crazily ancient text of stories and wisdom and places it like a transparency over his life. He chooses duty over desire, his wife and kids over himself, a long view of future generations over the present pain. It really is remarkable, that anyone would do this. And yet, that’s just what Christ promises to do. Flip your world. Renew your mind. Open your eyes.

But aside from the faith element, which Harrison handles in a refreshingly honest but still lighthearted and yet serious way, the whole idea of seeing your life and your choices as guided by something greater than personal fulfillment is one that is worth exploring.

In an insightful look at the final episode of The Crown,

Samuel D. James

points out that in The Crown “The Self is Boring.” And it’s true. Self-fulfillment becomes incredibly banal as it plays out in most of the characters. In contrast, when the Queen chooses over and over again to place her desires and proclivities on the altar of higher purpose and service, we are compelled and moved. But read the essay— he says it better.

One of the reasons Quinn found me reading like a madwoman on the couch was how easy this story was to read— good writing and a hilarious outlook— but my biggest takeaway was how transformative it is when someone chooses to love others instead of themself. It’s a tale as old as time, but certainly not as common.

“God likes to work on broken things,” Harrison’s friend told him. And that’s true for all of us. It takes maybe a crazy leap of other-worldly gumption and clinging to a God you have not figured out to say, I’m not going to protect myself here or find my way to my safe place— instead I’m going to let God do the work, come what may. And if the Story is true, that’s the best hope we have, the only real hope we have, for finding our life. You really do have to lose it.