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This Is How Your Marriage Ends

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This Is How Your Marriage Ends

A Hopeful Approach to Saving Relationships

HarperOne,

15 min read
6 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

Lessons in maintaining a happy marriage – from someone who learned the hard way.


Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Applicable
  • Eye Opening
  • Engaging

Recommendation

Matthew Fray has found success as a relationship coach, helping thousands of people deal with the challenges of marriage – but it all started with his own divorce. In 2013, Fray started a blog to express his sadness and anger in the wake of his failed marriage. Fray’s honesty about his unthinking behavior and his regret over how it ruined his marriage resonated with readers. Here, writing for an audience of men, Fray deploys hard-won insight and a self-deprecating sense of humor. He lays most of the blame for failed marriages at the feet of men, but he assures readers their relationships don’t have to be a lost cause – if they’re willing to look at marriage from a different perspective.

Summary

Divorce rates have reached crisis levels because people don’t know how to make a marriage work.

Dysfunctional marriages and divorce cause emotional damage and threaten people’s physical health. Statistics indicate roughly 70% of married couples will either get a divorce or become unhappy within their marriage. Psychologists rate divorce and marital separation the second and third, respectively, most stressful events in a person’s life. Marriages tend to disintegrate imperceptibly. Most people aren’t even cognizant of what’s going on, mainly because damaging incidents resemble pinpricks and paper cuts, not explosions or gunfire.

Most people enter into marriage blissfully unaware of how an accumulation of seemingly trivial events can erode a loving relationship. Parents and teachers don’t pass along this vital insight. It’s not their fault; no one taught them, either. High divorce rates reflect the lack of knowledge previous generations have handed down. Many men assume they’re good husbands because they’re decent and likable and would never intentionally harm anyone. Yet good people can be bad spouses.

Breaches of trust...

About the Author

Matthew Fray is an author, blogger and relationship coach who uses lessons from his failed marriage to help others avoid making the same mistakes.


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