How to Stay Married

In his third memoir, the hilarious and heartbreaking How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told, author Harrison Scott Key quips, “Men never talk about being betrayed. I want to. I feel I must. I have many deep convictions, and one of them is that suffering can and should be monetized.” Key has done an excellent job thus far, with his debut The World’s Largest Man, winner of the 2016 Thurber Prize for American Humor, and 2018’s Congratulations, Who Are You Again? Fans know that his books are a potent mix of sharp, poignant and funny, thanks to the author’s penchant for openly talking about his baser instincts and his ability to take small, meaningful moments and extrapolate them out to large, cleverly expressed truths. “Even if nobody bought it, even if my agent hated it, I had to get this mf-ing book out of my brain and my heart.” Read our interview with Harrison Scott Key. In How to Stay Married, an onslaught of truths began with a devastating 2017 revelation: Lauren, Key’s wife since 2002, had been having an affair for five years. Her affair partner, called “Chad” in the book, was a married neighbor with a family that often spent time with Key’s own. The shock was deep and destabilizing, sending the author on an urgent journey of discovery (When did it go wrong? How did he miss the signs? How will their three daughters react? Should he buy a truck?) and a deep exploration of his Christian faith. With wit and anger, humility and warmth, Key chronicles the myriad ways he has strived to understand how a couple with a lovely origin story could have grown so far apart. A chapter called “The Little Lawn Boy Learns His ABCs” is a tour de force of alphabetized self-examination (and, sometimes, self-flagellation), and a chapter by Lauren called “A Whore in Church” offers plain-spoken insight into the pain of her past and her choices in the present. As the couple worked to figure out, together and separately, what the future might hold, Key found himself wondering, “What if, in some cosmically weird way, escaping a hard marriage is not how you change? What if staying married is?” How to Stay Married makes a strong case for that approach to romantic partnership, while offering plentiful food for thought about faith, humor, courage and love.

Author Harrison Scott Key narrates his book How to Stay Married (8.5 hours), the self-proclaimed “most insane love story ever told,” in which he tears down all the cultural boundaries of marital secrecy to spill the details of his wife’s five-year-long infidelity. In a confessional-like manner, Key recounts the aftermath of when Lauren Key, the mother of his three children, asks for a divorce—a moment when everything he knew about Lauren, love and faith all come crashing down. While he grapples with this new reality, he discusses his own personal failures and doubts. “The truth will set you free,” Key writes, then adds, “free to lose your mind.” Key’s deadpan delivery makes the wisecracks all the more hilarious and bitter (especially when making fun of “Chad,” the man with whom Lauren fell in love), and the heartbreak all the more aching. One chapter near the end of the book titled “A Whore in Church” is written by Lauren, and she reads her own honest words with a clear voice. With ample comic relief, How to Stay Married is an absolute whirlwind of brokenness and humility that’s also embedded with hope and forgiveness. Read our starred review of the print edition of How to Stay Married.