For some reason this book, Marriage Confidential, just really brought out my passionate disapproving/disappointed side!

Normally when I dislike a book I simply brush it under the rug and don’t think twice about it. I don’t even write a review because as an author I’d want to curl into a ball in the corner if everyone wrote bad reviews about my baby that I toiled over for 2.5 years. 

Here’s my review on GoodReads of Marriage Confidential: The Post-Romantic Age of Workhorse Wives, Royal Children, Undersexed Spouses and Rebel Couples: 

I really wanted to like this book. On it’s face, it’s a critical look at the institution of marriage and the ways in which it is currently broken in the “post-romantic era.” Haag investigates “melancholy marriages” which are characterized by low-stress, low-conflict, depressing, passionless arrangements that are not divorce-worthy but certainly not happiness-producing. 

While it did spark many conversations, I have two core issues: 

-Her writing style is BEYOND pretentious — to the point of almost condescending. The book comes across as a vocabulary pissing match — with phrases like “the captor of parenthood,” “despite our abstract opprobrium,” “peccadillo,” “obstinately significant,” and “listened gluttonously.” One or two per chapter are manageable; one or two per page are just showing off and obstructing her points. 

-Haag presents absolutely NO solutions to melancholy marriages beyond swinging and polyamory. It’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Damned if you break your marriage, and certainly damned if you try to fix it. In her epilogue she says that this book is a “manifesto for living large in marriage” — but none of the chapters support that. Rather, they outline how marriages are inevitably (and unavoidably) corroded by time, children and affairs.

The one thing I found interesting was how much more frequent “affairs of the mind” are becoming with everyone having such easy, private access to the Internet, Facebook, social media, chatrooms, online dating sites for affairs (the deplorable AshleyMadison.com), etc. 

Why am I so riled up about this book in particular? Because I think it’s an incredibly important topic to broach, and this book is a missed opportunity. I forced myself to finish it, interested and intrigued at times though generally very put-off based on the reasons above. Ultimately I finished reading it with a sense of utter depression about the state of marriage in America.

Has anyone else read this book? Curious to hear your thoughts…