Marriage Shock

Women in first and second marriages, married at twenty or forty-five, describe their unexpected, often lonely transformation from women into wives and their inability to stop, or even articulate, its occurrence. As one woman says, "Within a year of my marrying, my plans for my own life, my own needs, had disappeared." Heyn argues that the ideal of the Virtuous Wife has taught us that she is the one responsible for the quality of the relationship--that to make a marriage work, women must be sacrificing, accommodating, good. But those are qualities for sainthood, not happiness. In fact, they assure precisely the opposite--distress, resentment, and guilt in both partners. 

Author: Dalm Heyn

Publisher: Villard

Released Date: 1997

ISBN: 9780679457732