Making Marriage Work: Love The One You’re With (NAPSA)—For better or for worse, in good times and in bad. Those words, part of the traditional wedding vows, serve as a reminder that marriage is not a happily-ever-after proposition; it is a construction project where the two partners are both management and labor—and though the project is never quite finished, it is always something beautiful to behold. Still, there’s bound to be prob- lems. Or, in the words of author Iris Krasnow, “Marriage can be hell.” Yet in her best-selling book, Surrendering to Marriage—Husbands, Wives and Other Imperfections (Talk Miramax Books, $13), Krasnow urges couples to stick it out, rather than searching for greener pastures. In fact, the writer believes that people should do everything in their power to join the marriage preservation movement, instead of becoming part of that staggering statistic, the 50 percent of unions that end in divorce. “Nothing better lies on the other side of the fence,” Krasnow reports, and she backs up this hypothesis with brutally honest, first-person accounts from men and women in various stages of marriage—from newlywed to adultery, from divorce to golden anniversary. In the book, Krasnow explains that staying married takes letting go of fantasy and embracing the imperfect grind of ordinary lives. In other words, making marriage = K| S/SVes go the distance requires surrendering to the fact that partners will loathe each other as much as they love each other. Surrendering to Marriage has become a bedside primer for couples about to get married, suffering from midlife malaise or living on the brink of divorce. Its resounding declaration is that marriage can be horrific, but divorce is almost always worse. “No one can give you sustained, perfect happiness,” says Krasnow. “You may as well love the imperfect one you’re with—especially if you havechildren.” Now in paperback, Surrendering to Marriage is available at bookstores everywhere.
