num_pages: 192
description: Seven essays celebrating the beauty of the imperfect marriage. We hear plenty about whether or not to get married but much less about what it takes to stay married. Clichs around marriageeternal bliss domestic harmony soul matesleave out the real stuff. After marriage you may still want to sleep with other people. Sometimes your partner will bore the hell out of you. And when stuck paying for your spouses mistakes you might miss being single. In Wedding Toasts Ill Never Give  Ada Calhoun presents an unflinching but also loving portrait of her own marriage opening a long-overdue conversation about the institution as it truly is: not the happy ending of a love story or a relic doomed by high divorce rates but the beginning of a challenging new chapter of which the first twenty years are the hardest. Calhouns funny poignant personal essays explore the bedrooms of modern coupledom for a nuanced discussion of infidelity existential anxiety and the many other obstacles to staying together. Both realistic and openhearted Wedding Toasts Ill Never Give offers a refreshing new way to think about marriage as a brave tough creative decision to stay with another person for the rest of your life. What a burden Calhoun calls marriage and what a gift.
language: English
title: Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give
publisher: W. W. Norton & Company