THE LONGEST DATE

An award-winning TV writer and magazine sex columnist gives the scoop on the “honest, horrible, hysterical truth about the early years of marriage.”

Nearing 40, Chupack had racked up “enough relationship wreckage to fill a book” and one failed marriage to a gay man. Then she met Ian, the player who unexpectedly became a prince—and her second husband. Despite years of relationship experience, however, the author came to this second marriage with no real insight into the endless compromises “forever” entailed and immediately began discovering truths about love she hadn’t counted on. Colds made her otherwise handsome husband seem weak and unattractive, while negative feelings she had about her body made Ian upset, especially when they kept them “from having fun.” Sharing space with another person—especially someone like Ian, who “left evidence of life all around the house”—could be difficult for a “neat freak” like her. Although she adored her husband, she could not love his belongings, which inevitably displaced the ordered, elegant world she had created for herself. The one exception was Ian’s dog, whose drooling and hair shedding became two more lessons in acceptance. Chupack also chronicles the heartbreaking struggles with infertility that left her and her husband teetering on the edge of despair. Only after the two of them decided to adopt did things change. Suddenly, they were caretakers of a life beyond themselves, and the formerly self-centered author was now a “citizen of the world,” actively seeking, and celebrating, connection with others. Marriage and motherhood, Chupack concludes, are not the happy endings everyone dreams they will be. Rather, they are beginnings that, for all the pain and loss they may entail, offer the chance to “see higher highs than you ever imagined.”

A straight-talking, funny and poignant memoir.