Marriage confidential : the post-romantic age of workhorse wives, royal children, undersexed spouses & rebel couples who are rewriting the rules
Summary
Combines autobiographical detail, cultural history, revelatory first-hand accounts, and research to unravel the sources of post-romantic discontent and offers inspiration for those who want more than the semi-happy status quo. Full description
- Marriage on the edge. The dilemmas of a semi-happy marriage : why we settle for ambivalence
- The new normals of career and marriage. "Life partners" : how too much intimacy killed intimacy ; "I can bring home the bacon" : how having it all became sort of having two things halfway ; The Tom Sawyer marriage : the plight of the new workhorse wife ; The joy of falling : downwardly mobile and mutually liberated
- Parenting marriages. The have children-will divorce paradox : how parenthood inspires marriage and then steals it ; Children, the new spouses : how the strength of family values became the weakness of family ; Man-cave in the promised land : how spouses reclaim their adulthood by acting like children ; Marital habitats : being married with children in public again
- New twists on old infidelities, or, the way we stray today. Stories of the "AFFAIRS" folder : the underwhelming crisis of infidelity ; "I call it married dating" : the accidental cheater in the age of Facebook and Google ; ISO (in search of) a bubble : the philanderer's defense
- The new monogamy. "The fifty-mile rule" : affair tolerators, then and now, or, the don't ask, don't tell marriage ; "We're making it up as we go along" : sexual libertarianism and the case against marital monogamy ; "A place where a sick marriage goes to die?" : the hidden world of "ethical nonmonogamy" ; "Free love 2.0" : the new open marriage
- "Why can't we have our cake and eat it, too?"