Ada Calhoun

Seven essays celebrating the beauty of the imperfect marriage.

Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give

Lynn

This was funnier than I expected, and more insighftul then I bargained for. To anyone who plans on getting married one day - this is the best frightening reality check that somehow makes you even more determined that marriage is the right choice.

Sarah Erle

abi a

Molly M

Yasmin

Poignant and witty essays on the beautiful complexity of marriage.

MacKenzie Hamon

Sierra Nguyen

Nicole Vanderbilt

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. Clichés around marriage—eternal bliss, domestic harmony, soul mates—leave 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 spouse’s mistakes, you might miss being single. In Wedding Toasts I’ll 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.” Calhoun’s 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 I’ll 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.”

Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give

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