How to Stay Married

By: Harrison Scott Key

Narrated by: Harrison Scott Key, Lauren Key

Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins

Publisher's summary

From Harrison Scott Key, winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, How to Stay Married tells the hilarious, shocking, and spiritually profound story of one man’s journey through hell and back when infidelity threatens his marriage.

One gorgeous autumn day, Harrison discovers that his wife—the sweet, funny, loving mother of their three daughters, a woman “who’s spent just about every Sunday of her life in a church”—is having an affair with a family friend. This revelation propels the hysterical, heartbreaking action of How to Stay Married, casting our narrator onto “the factory floor of hell,” where his wife was now in love with a man who “wears cargo shorts, on purpose.” What will he do? Kick her out? Set fire to all her panties in the yard? Beat this man to death with a gardening implement? Ask God for help in winning her back?

Armed with little but a sense of humor and a hunger for the truth, Harrison embarks on a hellish journey into his past, seeking answers to the riddles of faith and forgiveness. Through an absurd series of escalating confessions and betrayals, Harrison reckons with his failure to love his wife in the ways she needed most, resolves to fight for his family, and in a climax almost too ridiculous to be believed, finally learns that love is no joke. How to Stay Married is a comic romp unlike any in contemporary literature, a wild Pilgrim’s Progress through the hellscape of marriage and the mysteries of mercy.

©2023 Harrison Scott Key (P)2023 Simon & Schuster Audio

Riveting

I listened to this over 2 days. Kept fitting it in between everything else I had to do because I couldn’t stop listening. One of the best books I’ve read or listened to in years. Will be recommending it to my friends.

Raw and unfiltered

I love and hate this story all at the same time. After reading this book I realize I need to get my own head out of the bowling ball bag.

Finally something real

This just might be the most honest and real look at marriage I’ve ever encountered. Beautifully written, funny, sad, then funny again. While there hasn’t been infidelity in my own marriage, there’s so much in their relationship anyone whose been married more than 5 seconds can relate to.

Read it. Encouraging. Inspiring. Challenging.

Highly recommend! Honest, funny, heartbreaking and inspiring. It’s a story of the importance of knowing yourself and your God to save your marriage. How neither staying married or faith in Christ doesn’t always make sense and not always easy but worth staying on that roller coaster for your own heart and more.

This hurt…in a good way.

At various points while reading this book I wanted to stop: it was so painful. But I needed that last chapter, I needed this message, which is why it hurt so much to listen to it. I highly recommend.

Amazingly honest and sincere

I loved this book. I found myself crying and laughing out loud as I listened. Thank you for sharing your story.

Heart wrenching and funny

It’s a tough story made more poignant by the reading by the author (and his wife!). If you’re uncomfortable with religion you may find it a bit much but I found it beautiful and sad and hopeful and raw and hilarious. A striking combination.

What a beautifully difficult and truthful look at marriage!

This one is not for the faint at heart. Some Christians will be shocked by the language and view of God. These same people would probably be shocked at how David speaks to God in the psalms. God welcomes and loves those who turn to him when they have nowhere else to turn. As Harrison says, “The only people who believe in miracles are the people who need them.” Anyone who has been married more than a few years or walked with God through tremendous pain and suffering will understand the beauty and challenge of this book.

Just fascinating

It’s a book club pick & wow, does it make you think. Raw, honest, written with such humility & humor.

Incredibly Raw and Redemptive

Incredibly Raw and Redemptive true story of a broken marriage mended by mercy. It’s SO good, and I’m grateful for having read it. Highly recommend!