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A review by lattelibrarian
But You Seemed So Happy: A Marriage, in Pieces and Bits by Kimberly Harrington
3.0
"Feeling unhinged at fifty is quite different than feeling unhinged at, say, twenty-eight. At twenty-eight you can arrogantly assume you have loads of runway left. Unhinged is even a bit adorable when you're that age, like you're the lead character in your own rom-com. If you're fifty and unhinged, your movie is going to be a drama and it will not be a good one."
I checked out this book either just as I was about to or immediately after I ended my two and a half year relationship. It's not the twenty years that Harrington discusses in her text, but it was my longest relationship to date. I found her "problem" to be the same as mine: He's a nice guy, but sometimes being nice just isn't enough. It's disappointing and dismaying. How could being nice be a problem? Why isn't it enough? And am I a cruel, heartless void of a person for breaking up with someone who really doesn't have anything disagreeable to him?
Harrington chronicles her views of marriage from childhood and viewing her own parents' divorce through breaking the news of her divorce to her children and the way it affected her and her kids. This was interspersed with diary entries from her youth, adding a bit of humorous flair to her essays.
(Also, a nod to the quote above, I'm turning 28 today and feeling quite unhinged. I'm rather excited to see what it will feel like in 22 years.)
From the tales of her youth working at an adult shop through her move across America and finding the perfect yet bedraggled house with her husband, nothing about her story comes across as the picture perfect idea one might associate with the word "normal". But that's her point--there is nothing normal about a life, nothing normal about marriage, nothing normal about divorce. Certainly there might be some traditions associated with it, or perhaps some stereotypes, but a relationship is just that: a relationship. And sometimes, those happen to come to an end.
She argues that endings should not necessarily fill others with dismay or pity. Sometimes they are natural and sometimes they are necessary. It doesn't always mean the pair loves each other any less, or that they love what they have built together any less. It's just that it is no longer working out in the way they had expected. And that is okay.
That is okay, I tell myself, three months after breaking up with my boyfriend. It is okay for Harrington. It is okay for me. Good things can come to an end, and it doesn't make them any less good.
I checked out this book either just as I was about to or immediately after I ended my two and a half year relationship. It's not the twenty years that Harrington discusses in her text, but it was my longest relationship to date. I found her "problem" to be the same as mine: He's a nice guy, but sometimes being nice just isn't enough. It's disappointing and dismaying. How could being nice be a problem? Why isn't it enough? And am I a cruel, heartless void of a person for breaking up with someone who really doesn't have anything disagreeable to him?
Harrington chronicles her views of marriage from childhood and viewing her own parents' divorce through breaking the news of her divorce to her children and the way it affected her and her kids. This was interspersed with diary entries from her youth, adding a bit of humorous flair to her essays.
(Also, a nod to the quote above, I'm turning 28 today and feeling quite unhinged. I'm rather excited to see what it will feel like in 22 years.)
From the tales of her youth working at an adult shop through her move across America and finding the perfect yet bedraggled house with her husband, nothing about her story comes across as the picture perfect idea one might associate with the word "normal". But that's her point--there is nothing normal about a life, nothing normal about marriage, nothing normal about divorce. Certainly there might be some traditions associated with it, or perhaps some stereotypes, but a relationship is just that: a relationship. And sometimes, those happen to come to an end.
She argues that endings should not necessarily fill others with dismay or pity. Sometimes they are natural and sometimes they are necessary. It doesn't always mean the pair loves each other any less, or that they love what they have built together any less. It's just that it is no longer working out in the way they had expected. And that is okay.
That is okay, I tell myself, three months after breaking up with my boyfriend. It is okay for Harrington. It is okay for me. Good things can come to an end, and it doesn't make them any less good.