Soho Press 2011
I spent years debating whether I wanted a divorce. My three children would live in a broken home, where the fairytale of one happy family, with mom and dad together would be lost. I’d be a single mom, who’d forfeit the comfort of depending on another person. But my husband and I hardly ever spoke as tension brewed within our suburban house where nights were spent in separate bedrooms. I finally admitted that both of us were miserable together, despite what should have been the perfect life with secure jobs, healthy kids, and funds for retirement and college.
Now looking back, perhaps I should have forced my husband to accompany me to a marriage counselor, one like Sharyn Wolf, who recounts in Love Shrinks the reasons she stayed married, though ultimately the marriage dissolved. Perhaps, for her, the breakup had to do with making love only three times in eight years, or constantly waiting for a man perpetually late, or disagreeing over whether the couch should be covered to protect it from stains. It didn’t help that they owed $40,000 in back taxes and that she was popping anti-anxiety pills to cope with the home situation. A Cairn terrier puppy—something to cherish together—didn’t bring them closer, nor did couples’ therapy. Her husband fruitlessly fought her wish to split up.
Needless to say, I understood her growing dissatisfaction with her mate, but as an expert on relationships, didn’t she have the answers to make a marriage succeed? After all, she’d written several self-help books on remaining lovers forever and keeping the honeymoon glow. Couldn’t she draw on her experience of being married twice before to make this third marriage thrive? She tries to find answers to her discontent as she counsels her patients about their marital woes. She analyzes how content they are being married. It turns out they are happier than she is—and often have better sex.
In a humorous, self-deprecating way, Wolf talks about how the best therapists will force you to revisit the painful past and the dreadful behavior of your family, but from the experience you’ll be reborn. For her that means confronting a childhood with an abusive father and a glamorous mother who drew men’s gazes (she admitted she’d have preferred a dowdy, fat mother). Yet, the book doesn’t delve deep enough into her days growing up, and the result is a fragmented view of the forces that shaped her and how her background contributed to an unfulfilling marriage.
My divorce is long past, but as I look to the future, I will remember key advice gleaned from the pages of Love Shrinks. Love lasts when you have the following three ingredients: what’s good for you, what’s good for your partner, and what’s good for the relationship. I have a formula for success, now it’s just a matter of falling in love again.
—
Jennifer Nelson is pursuing an MFA in creative nonfiction at Vermont College of Fine Arts after spending years teaching French and writing for newspapers and magazines. She lives in Hopewell, New Jersey, with three teenagers.