I wrote a funny, romantic book that underscores the challenges of marriage and paints my husband as the hero of the story, and from the NY Times review to the tabloid coverage to The View, it's been warped to "Wife Is Total Bitch."
WOMAN CLAIMS SHE “HATES” HUSBAND IN MEMOIR: Journalist, wife and mother Heather Havrilesky gets real in her memoir about how she feels about her husband while reflecting on 16 years of marriage –
#TheView
panel discusses if they can relate.
Stream the full show now on
@hulu
.
Do men who write comedic memoirs wind up with headlines like "Husband Hates Wife, Calls Marriage 'Insane'"? Or are their full names used?
Do editors find and publish Instagram photos of them in bathing suits, or are they asked thoughtful questions about their actual books?
And if my husband weren't confident enough not to feel threatened by my jokes, I wouldn't have written the book at all. Every writer should be so lucky. The people who are "emasculated" by this book are the men too weak to imagine a truly egalitarian relationship.
The misogyny is just inescapable at this point.
I’ve always told my daughters that they should dare to show the full force of their personalities out in the world without apology. Now unfortunately they have a glimpse of how ugly that can look in our sexist culture.
When you're a woman, your emotions are encountered as offensive, what's true is treated like an obscene secret, and your name is swapped out for WIFE or MOM at every turn. These things limit women's careers every day. It's not the world I want for my daughters.
Since the outrage over the
@nytimes
excerpt and the dismissive review by a man in the
@nytimes
, I've tried to laugh it off.
But when we saw The View clip last night, my teenage daughters were baffled. “Why don’t they say your name or book title? It’s just ‘Wife hates husband?'”
But the message here isn't about getting lucky. It's about showing up for the imperfect life you have - sometimes feeling like a loser and a failure - and daring to open your heart as wide as it will go.
After 26 years as an essayist, humorist, and cultural critic, would a male author's sardonic memoir be summed up as a "bombshell confession" by an angry wife hellbent on humiliating her husband?
This pushback is a piece of our culture’s insistence that all stories of love remain firmly grounded in sugarcoated, airbrushed fantasies. Once you kiss, it’s straight to happily ever after, a stagnant state you must maintain until dead or you’re a failure as a wife, as a woman.
Most of the "snippets" on The View are out-of-context quotes from an interview with The Times UK that were further warped by the Daily Mail and the NY Post.
My book isn't about hatred at all. It's about trying to love and be loved in spite of your flaws.
If I didn't love my book, which is both funny *and* heavy just like a real marriage, I wouldn't push back so hard. If I didn't want a more humane world for my daughters, I wouldn't be so outspoken about how misogyny quickly turns misreads into malicious distortions.
That extreme denial isn’t just misguided and sexist. It's inhumane to the regular, flawed married people struggling to stay together under the impossibly bloated expectations of how a 'good' wife or mother should look and sound.
Why am I not at all surprised that the
@nytimes
assigned my memoir about marriage to a man who feels an absolutely moralistic sense that the details of a marriage should be kept secret?
It’s pub day for my marriage memoir Foreverland, and I’m in a cab driving into NYC for the first time in 4 years, feeling unbelievably grateful for my absurdly tolerant husband Bill, who is just as sweet and pretty as he looks here.
I've been discussed on The View before, after I wrote a
@nytimes
piece about being addressed as "Mom" by strangers.
They didn't use my name then either. Ironically the segment began with Whoopi saying “So this MOM says she doesn't want to be called MOM!"
@WhoopiGoldberg
@JoyVBehar
@sarahaines
@sunny
Half a million people have watched you trashing a woman's memoir that you haven't read and don't even name. Why not read Foreverland, have me on the show, and we'll have a real conversation about it?
WOMAN CLAIMS SHE “HATES” HUSBAND IN MEMOIR: Journalist, wife and mother Heather Havrilesky gets real in her memoir about how she feels about her husband while reflecting on 16 years of marriage –
#TheView
panel discusses if they can relate.
Stream the full show now on
@hulu
.
This bullshit, sugarcoated, careful, fearful and most importantly *deeply boring* approach to conversations (and books and movies!) about marriage is exactly why I wrote my book. Buy it here, motherfuckers, because it's gooooood.
Some are making jokes about Walter Kirn being married 3x. Divorce is not a form of failure. People outgrow each other or choose without knowing what they're choosing. It's not humane to treat marriage as a litmus test of character or stamina or honor.
Tweeting trivial bullshit can be another way of coping with heaviness and fear. Scolding people like you're the only one who takes war seriously is the most myopic thing of all.
Teaching kids not to mirror the anxious perfectionism of the world around them and to embrace joy wherever they can find it: This is the primary job of parenting.
@WhoopiGoldberg
@JoyVBehar
@sarahaines
@sunny
I know the takeaway can't be "Women shouldn't write down true things" or "Wives shouldn't criticize their husbands" or "Female authors with 4 books & 26 years of experience are just a punchline to us."
@WhoopiGoldberg
@JoyVBehar
@sarahaines
@sunny
Even if you refuse, ask yourself what example you set when you use "wife" instead of a female author's name and trash her book (that you haven't read)? Those "snippets" were mostly quotes from a Times UK article, not my book at all.
@WhoopiGoldberg
@JoyVBehar
@sarahaines
@sunny
I poured my heart into that book. We could have a much richer conversation about love, marriage, and the enormous expectations we place on wives and mothers to do everything the "right" way, one that goes beyond "Wife Is Total Bitch."
@WhoopiGoldberg
@JoyVBehar
@sarahaines
@sunny
My teenage daughters think The View is regressive and cringey now. I tried to tell them "Any show with all women hosts is arguably feminist, even when you don't agree with them." But you *all* need to do better.
Will you dislike me after you read it? Probably! The point of first-person writing isn't to run for office. You tell the truth and the reader goes for a good ride. This book is a great ride, whether you think I'm awful or not.
"It’s completely shameless, and it’s not even the first time this month the RNC Research Twitter account has gotten caught spreading blatant misinformation to smear Democrats." Big fan of
@atrupar
's Public Notice.
Keep telling us whose stories deserve to be told (Yours!) and whose don't (Everyone else's! It's distasteful when they do it!). This is why we write, motherfuckers.
Our culture's deep-seated belief in misery and self-sacrifice and suspicion toward pleasure and joy can trick you into encountering yourself as messy and selfish just for feeling your emotions. Don't let it.
For the record, it's fine. I've written tons of harsh book reviews. We all have our tastes and opinions. I do think the bigger sexist picture is absolutely rich, though. The righteousness a man can conjure when a woman reveals too much is truly remarkable.
Can confirm. One of the reasons I moved to Substack was to protect my ownership of Ask Polly. CA freelance laws cut my income in half, but joining the staff at NYMag/Vox meant yielding IP/ handing over a property I'd worked hard to create at The Awl (thanks to
@choire
's support).
People today are extremely conflict avoidant.
Refusing to engage and ghosting are often portrayed as self-actualized and powerful while direct communication is encountered as weak.
But intimacy depends on navigating conflict without fear.
My new book about marriage is excerpted in this Sunday's
@nytimes
, a little nastiness to get you through the trials and tribulations of the holiday season.
Joy is only available to those who let their deepest needs and emotions into the room. You have to feel your sadness and anger in order to feel your joy. It's a package deal.
I love how this dilemma is often presented as "big city vs. suburbs" with the very relaxing and affordable alternative of medium-size towns widely treated as a vacuum of culture and ambition.
When a woman's marriage memoir is handed off to a man who breezes over the book in order to wring his hands over her husband's feelings repeatedly? That's a pretty vivid example of how we casually undermine women's work by putting men's feelings front and center.
Finally I want to strongly recommend these books by Kiese Laymon,
@lsjamison
, Grace Lavery,
@DamonYoungVSB
,
@Julia_May_Jonas
, and
@laurenthehough
, brave writers who dare to dive straight into the most difficult, potentially embarrassing part of the story.
Strongly agree! This is a major theme of my book, hence the first few lines (which toy with the concept that a 'happy' marriage is one that lasts until you die).
You deny yourself freedom, supposedly for the sake of others, and eventually you're denying other people their freedom because it pains you to witness the life you surrendered to your rigid worldview.
Also, taking issue with sweeping statements? Sounds like you'd probably also hate George Bernard Shaw, Dorothy Parker, Shakespeare. Or is it just the women confident enough to make a sweeping statement that piss you off?
To succeed, female creatives, particularly women of color, have to be a million times *kinder*, they have to *learn the system*, they have to appear *non-threatening*, all while standing their ground, ready to fight for their rights. Walking that tight rope is exhausting.
On the feminist front, I should add my friend
@Carina_Chocano
's hilarious & smart book You Play The Girl, which won the National Book Critics Circle award in 2018. It's all about how women and girls are undermined, misunderstood, & maligned by our culture.
Feeling everything doesn't just make you happier, it strengthens your principles. Compassion for yourself and others fuels your ability to honor your principles and stand up for what's right. When you feel free, you want to share that feeling.
In denigrating other people's 'poor' choices, they think they're celebrating their own relative fortitude and resilience. But what they really worship is safety from the natural chaos of emotional intimacy.
Women hold other women back professionally thanks to internalized misogyny, envy, racism. We've all been trained like SEALs to roll our eyes at women our entire lives. Corporate environments make use of that training and recognize/ promote brutal gatekeepers when they see them.
Our culture is allergic to women. The evidence is everywhere. It's hard to stay mad about it every day or you'll lose your mind. But our young women and girls deserve better.
I don't have a beef with him. Dog-piling a person with a flawed past can turn against everyone one of us, because we're all flawed and will continue making mistakes until we're dead. My concern is how we continue to encounter women's stories and emotions with suspicion and fear.
This
@NewYorker
review by Becca Rothfeld made me cry in my car waiting for the kids yesterday. She understands exactly what I was aiming for with Foreverland. A review this smart and thoughtful honestly makes every other misreading worth it.
I want the old school, full service accountant who comes to your house and rifles through your sock drawer looking for old receipts while you sip on a snifter of cognac.
Asserting yourself in a relationship, daring to be honest, asking for what you need are ways of seeing another person's principles close up. Can they handle the inconveniences of real intimacy? This is true for friendships, too. And a lot of people just can't.
People who tell stories of control and choice, where anyone in a tough spot landed there due to some big mistake *they personally* would never make, are some of the least principled people you'll ever meet.
I'm not asking for rave reviews. This one is engaging. I just want to underscore that men's anxieties and fears about women's feelings - the way they play out in workplaces, in marriages, everywhere - are a piece of what keeps women undermined and underrated.
When your toddler takes on and off multiple pairs of socks every morning, screaming in agony over the unbearable inadequacy of each pair, this is a glimpse straight into the darkness of your bad genes.
Big picture, though? Let's make more space for women to show the full force of their personalities in their work, in their workplaces, in their relationships and notice when we encounter a woman's most vulnerable or guarded feelings as threatening or poisonous or impolite.
Georgia motherfucking O'Keeffe. Every time I think I've seen it all, she gives me something new.
Rest your eyeballs on these motherfucking pears and know greatness.
Hot tip for managing your social media use:
The very first second you feel the slightest tinge of angst or anxiety over a tweet or post? Quit the app, put down your phone, walk out into the freezing wind and stand there until you can't remember what social media is.
People who make money and feed their egos by reinforcing the status quo even after conditions become intolerable for everyone else: grow a nervous system with a functioning brain and heart you fucking ghouls.
"Marriage requires amnesia, a mute button, a filter on the lens, a damper, some blinders, some bumpers, some ear plugs, a nap," writes Heather Havrilesky for
@NYTStyles
.
This is why I'm outspoken about the outrage around my failing to embody a rigid ideal of 'good wife' by making jokes in a book about marriage. Playing a role isn't a path to joy. You have to feel your way there. Longterm intimacy and *real* lived principles include messy work.
Do you feel like you've been broken for way too long? Well maybe you've been broken for JUST LONG ENOUGH to feel *everything* in ways that other people can't.
Why does anyone think that the NYer's Strong profile is a hit piece? It struck me as a thoughtful, affectionate analysis of an intense, committed, inspired artist. Please, give us *more* celeb profiles that don't read like bland publicist-micromanaged press releases.
I love how
@TaylorLorenz
calls this stuff out, questioning *who* is viewed as talented / promoted and who gains popularity but not status.
Life is a lot easier for women when they nod along and stfu. Making noise takes courage.
The big picture is what matters to me. Fair enough to casually assign a woman's marriage memoir to a man who thinks "marriage is a secret." But these casual decisions add up to a world where women's feelings are encountered not just as trivial but aberrant and unwelcome.
Live footage of my husband learning that he's in a traditional relationship where the wife does all the housework and accepts her miserable pseudo-feminist life without complaint.
A lot of people don't consciously recognize their need for deeply felt relationships and emotions. That doesn't make them bad. Unprincipled people *pretend* they feel things until a relationship becomes inconvenient. Then they tell a story to let themselves off the hook.
In which Albert Burneko calls the NY Times excerpt of my book a "blog," says relationships should never be "hard," and encourages my husband to call a divorce lawyer. Enlightened addition to the discourse, Al!
Every book written by a woman doesn't have to be boiled down to whether or not we like the author's personality or think she's a good wife. Let's leave creepy sexist evaluations in the distant past where they belong, and judge a book on its own merits instead.
Unprincipled people love to talk about roles, what's appropriate, what's acceptable, what's normal. But then you witness them abandoning their closest relationships when they become inconvenient. The rigid roles they advocate aren't principled at all, they're forged out of fear.
On
@hhavrilesky
's FOREVERLAND,
@fiftytwowest
writes: "She walks the tightrope here, unflinching in her appraisal, indulgent in her praise… The book is a delight; it is a magic trick. It is also terrifically funny."
@SouthRevBooks
#bookreview
And I love that a guy who built his career on supposedly saying things that no one else will dare to say is shitting himself over a woman doing the same thing.
Men have publicly complained about their wives for centuries but when a woman does it, she's evil. Grow up, babies.
If you were raised by people who were afraid of intimacy, you're going to have to work hard to avoid withdrawing, becoming hypercritical, turning numb, and running away from love, even when you know you're in the right place.