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Surrendering To Marriage: Husbands, Wives and Other Imperfections
by Iris Krasnow

Hyperion Press
May 2002, 224 pages, $13.00 U.S.

By D.R.Peak
PopMatters Book Critic

"He was a boy, she was a girl,
Can I make it any more obvious?"
Avril Lavigne


Surrendering To Love

What's the biggest hindrance to any marriage? Why, the human brain, of course. It's an easy thing to imagine that the kisses are sweeter from another pair of lips when your spouse is knee deep in laundry or complaining that you never help around the house. The cute thing you see in line at the bank would never complain about something like that to you, now would they?

One would think that a happy marriage would be an easy thing for a couple to maintain. After all, they married for love, didn't they? To be together 'til death do they part, through the good days and bad, through the trials and tribulations associated with children, jobs, friends and family.

But then why do nearly half of all marriages nowadays end in divorce? And why so often in bitter, frenetic, spiteful divorces full of bad will. And why are there so many marriage counselors nowadays? Forty-seven in my phone book alone. A hundred years ago there were no professional marriage counselors besides the occasional priest or rabbi. Now it's a thriving industry with its own annual conventions.

How do we get ourselves into these situations?

Easy: By not marrying for love, but instead for money or children or convenience or ennui; and/or by not trying to remain in love. If you feel like giving up at the first bump in the road then it's probably not love, is it?

So where has love gone? And why isn't it the primary factor in keeping marriages together?

Of course you can still be head over heels with your mate and yet not be in a happy marriage. Long hours at work, money (usually the lack thereof), lack of quality time spent together, sexual needs and desires not in alignment can all affect even the most in love of couples.


Divorce separates not just the couple involved but sunders children, splits friends into opposing camps, and mangles families. An hour-long fling or a weekend getaway affects more than just your loving spouse. It affects the family in its entirety.

And Iris Krasnow, author of Surrendering To Motherhood, knows this well. In this book she points out the obvious in such a clear, concise, matter-of-fact manner that you wonder why you never heard it before. Intermixed with stories from the many men and women, divorcees and still-marrieds, that Krasnow interviewed is her own sometimes very personal and revealing tales of marital hardship--the fights and breakups; the compromises and make-ups--and how she always found enough of a reason to stick it out, either for the four children she shares with her husband, or because of the twelve years involved so far in a working relationship, or simply for love.

After nearly all of her friends' marriages ended in divorce, Krasnow knew best to stand by her husband, whom she admits is her opposite in many ways, and work things out, because it was best for the family. She felt that they truly loved one another and could work out their problems. Now, admittedly, not every couple can and Krasnow does reveal that in preparing this book for publication that she came close to ending the book along with her marriage. But she somehow found the strength to carry on with both, making her case that a marriage is meant to last.

I don't think this book is for everybody--Krasnow's style is more Internet journalist than self-help guru--but for a select few, it could make a big difference in their life and marriage.

Read it, pass it on.