“Nobody likes to talk about the boredom of marriage” – the author accuses her of hating her husband
Every once in a while a book comes along that completely polarizes opinion, often along the sharp lines between those who get it and those who haven’t read it but think they will.
And when Heather Havrilesky delivered her latest non-fiction book Foreverland: On the Divine Boredom of Marriagecould she not have foreseen the number of reactions the book would receive.
“Wife calls marriage ‘crazy,’ hates her husband,” marveled a US tabloid in the book’s synopsis. Many others followed suit, wondering how North Carolina resident Havrilesky could be anything other than adoring her 16-year-old husband and the father of their children. Then earlier this month a US talk show The view climbed into the fray and appended an article to the book about the idea of Havrilesky calling anyone considering marriage a “masochist.”
Havrilesky certainly says that, but in a 305-page book she says a lot more things. The truth is, Forever is a witty, dry and entertaining ode to marriage that anyone who’s been through their own honeymoon can easily relate to.
With the same biting humor as in her previous books What if that was enough? and Disaster Preparedness, Havrilesky chronicles the various challenges she and her husband Bill have encountered. They are painted with different brightness; Bill’s imperfect marriage proposal; the cozy monotony of suburban life; a romantic trip to Paris gone wrong; miss a flight with young children; a crush on another author that develops an odd dynamic; the emotionally strained swamp of new motherhood; meeting her stepson; Cancer; a pandemic, the disappointing moments sewn into their own wedding day. There are hisses, resentment, quiet explosions at the utterance of the words “calm down” and sustained irritation at the coughing (“it’s like the pickiest butler in the mansion is making a very important announcement and he needs to get the attention of all the children and wives and animals within earshot,” she writes). All things that come naturally in most regular marriages.
Forever reads like an unfiltered look at marriage and is therefore all the more romantic and human. Choosing to spend your life with someone else is an act of insanity, Havrilesky concedes, but it’s also about finding your way through the tough times onto calmer terrain. It’s about accepting not only your partner’s flaws, but your own as well.
“We tend to think of love as love for someone’s good qualities, while I feel love is also loving someone for their flaws. If you do, you have a chance for an extremely rewarding relationship,” she says.
Heather and her husband Bill
But when Havrilesky describes a spouse as “a combination of a blessing and a curse,” many people talk about it Forever can’t understand that one can be true next to the other.
“I think at this point in my life I’m interested in ambivalence,” says Havrilevsky. “We tend to boil things down to two binaries, black and white. Love and hate. You either have the perfect marriage or you should divorce immediately.
“As I was writing this book, it was interesting to discover how deeply ambivalent we both (Bill and I) were about something that was actually traditional. I felt secure enough in my relationship that I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to destroy what I had by writing this book. I was sure my husband wouldn’t be embarrassed.” For the record, he’s not embarrassed by the book or the critical aftermath.
People who have read Havrilesky’s earlier books will surely appreciate this narrow-eyed look at an age-old institution. What she didn’t expect was the backlash from people who believe she’s lifting some sort of veil around the long-held “truth” of marriage.
“Before you get married you want to believe that marriage is just a happy ending that stagnates and you don’t have to work so hard at it. For example, if you solve the puzzle, you get the treasure,” says Havrilesky. “But you build a relationship with someone, and you adapt, and it’s a growing, living thing that changes every day.
“I expected some people to feel some kind of disgust at the way I talked about marriage,” adds Havrilesky. “At first I thought I’d be lucky if this book gets any attention at all, but if it does we’re going to pay hell because no one likes to talk about marriage, the nuances or anything like that. Marriage evolves.
“I think we judge women’s first-person stories based on whether we like them or not, and what the hell is that about? Where would Martin Amis be if this happened to men? It becomes a situation where each woman’s story becomes an evaluation of her character. Why are so many people wondering if I’m a good wife?”
With the conversation setup around Forever In the US, one might think that Havrilesky’s publishers would be ecstatic and go along with some sort of “all publicity is good publicity” logic. The author herself is not quite so sure.
“I had heard from people at some independent bookstores that this stuff affects sales,” Havrilesky admits. “They will recommend a book and someone will say something like, ‘Oh no, that’s the book about the bitch who hates her husband.’ People had a very strange way of copying the book without reading it. And that worried me.”
After working as a television critic for salon and publishing an advice column, Ask Polly, for new York Magazine (which now appears on Substack), Havrilesky has steadily built a small but distinguished readership. Among them was an education professor, Bill Sandoval, who emailed her that he was “deeply touched” by something she had written.
Foreverland: On the Divine Boredom of Marriage by Heather Havrilesky
“I definitely recommend marrying a fanboy,” says Havrilesky dryly. “At the time I was in a phase of, ‘I’m not going to pretend to be slack. I don’t go into a relationship for a year and then show someone who I am,” which I’ve been pretending to do for decades.
“When you behave like that, you attract men who want what a certain type of man is. I needed to be with someone who could accept that a woman could be complex, complicated, and difficult. I needed someone who loves women for their complexity.”
The first few months of Havrilesky’s courtship with Sandoval were idyllic. “It was like, ‘Oh my god, I’m just stoned on you.’ We were just listening to Jeff Buckley, just being together like that. it was crazy
“We started talking about how serious we felt this was getting about four months later. The irony is that this is exactly where you start to have problems.”
The time of publication of Forever is interesting as the pandemic has left most couples living in close quarters for months, possibly for the first time, and many of them are likely to be in self-examination mode.
“I think a lot of people have been struggling during the pandemic,” says Havrilesky. “I have observed that people struggled at first and then learned more about their spouses and became more peaceful. Like, ‘Hey, we really belong together because we can do this thing’.”
2020 was a year when Havrilesky moved herself to her Los Angeles home with Bill, her daughters Claire, 15, and Ivy, 13, her two dogs, Fig and Olive, her stepson, Zeke (Bill’s son from a previous marriage), and his girlfriend was grabbed. (ThThe family has moved North Carolina, last August when the book was finished).
2020, following the co-author’s recovery from breast cancer and the “lingering aftershocks of the odd crush,” was also a year when Havrilesky was seldom so sure that her marriage to Bill would make it through until death do them apart.
“Bill is just a very, very grounding and caring person,” says Havrilesky. “He was running the house when I was recovering. Instead of feeling like, ‘Oh god, can we handle this?’ I was like, ‘Oh, we’re really good under pressure’. I really felt like I was in the right place with the right person.
“I don’t really like to say things like that out loud, but Bill and I are having a little second honeymoon period,” she adds. “We’re both really proud of the book and he’s proud that he’s a person who can handle a situation like this and I’m proud of him for that.”
Foreverland: On the Divine Boredom of marriage by Heather Havrilesky is now available through Ecco
https://www.independent.ie/life/no-one-likes-to-talk-about-the-tedium-of-marriage-the-author-accused-of-hating-her-husband-41472338.html “Nobody likes to talk about the boredom of marriage” – the author accuses her of hating her husband