How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told

by Harrison Scott Key

Pop knew that the best way to rid yourself of trauma was to bequeath it to your children.

We could not bear to hear about the suffering of the people in the room, Good Lord, no: too real. We never prayed for our marriages, our children, our interior lives. The fable of our being respectable taxpayers would be shattered by anything real. I needed prayers.

I finally got what love was, that a baby creates love because babies dismantle vanity and pride, if you love them the way you’re supposed to, and God had finally broken me enough to see the love.

I think I had to let myself be broken, to be broken and die, to let the best parts of me live.

Find these people. They will keep you alive. Avoid the idiots if you can. The world is full of bad advice from bitter and hopeless wretches who don’t even know they’re not helping.

“Compatibility is an achievement of love; it must not be its precondition.”