Heather Havrilesky, FOREVERLAND: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage
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[0:41]Heather Heverleski is the author of Foreverland, on the divine tedium of marriage.
[0:46]Heather is also the author of What If This Were Enough, How To Be A Person In The World,
[0:51]and Disaster Preparedness.
[0:53]She writes the Ask Poly Column for New York Magazine, as well as the newsletter Ask Molly,
[0:58]and has written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, and NPRs
[1:01]all things considered among others.
[1:03]She was salon TV's critic for seven years.
[1:06]She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their children.
[1:09]Heather, thanks so much for coming in, Momstone, her time to read books to discuss
[1:13]Foreverland on the divine tedium of marriage.
[1:16]Thanks, Siviowens, so happy to be here.
[1:18]This book had more amazing one-liners.
[1:21]Like, I feel like I could have underlined every line.
[1:24]Like, you could have a whole Twitter account.
[1:26]In fact, I went on your Twitter to see if maybe you were already doing that.
[1:29]Like, you could just take all these one-liners, and they should all be tweets, because
[1:33]they're so good anyway.
[1:36]I should do that.
[1:37]You should do that.
[1:38]That's the kind of thing that I don't generally do, and I should do.
[1:42]You should, because I feel like they could all be on a t-shirt.
[1:45]Seriously, I want to put this one, which is the one I look.
[1:50]A baby is a marriage crisis.
[1:51]That's a true amount of t-shirt.
[1:53]That's hilarious.
[1:55]Happy new baby here, because you're a teacher and a copy of Heather's book.
[1:59]Yeah.
[2:00]Okay.
[2:01]For people who are not familiar with your book, could you please explain the whole premise
[2:06]behind it and what inspired you to share all of this private information?
[2:13]Well, I knew that I had a lot of stories from the last 15 years of raising kids and
[2:20]having, you know, maintaining a marriage with relative success.
[2:26]And when I read books about marriage, further purposes I reviewed a few books about marriage,
[2:30]I sort of was struck by how I always felt like I wanted to know more.
[2:36]Like I couldn't see, I wanted to know how, you know, I would end up with theories about
[2:41]how well people got along, because I couldn't tell from reading the book what the texture
[2:47]of the marriage was like.
[2:48]And so I figured that because my marriage is healthy and happy, that I should be the
[2:54]one to write perfectly wonderful, honest, you know, brutally clear picture to write the
[3:04]book about marriage that didn't exist, to give you a feeling of how hard it can be,
[3:11]how you can have cold feet, even though you know you found the person you want to be with.
[3:17]And in fact, when you found the person you really want to be with, and you know that
[3:22]they're right for you, and you know that they're healthy for you, and you're attracted
[3:27]to them, you can't talk yourself out of being with them because everything adds up.
[3:31]That's when your commitment, phobic soul comes out, and that's when your sort of worst
[3:37]self shows up to mess things up, because that's when you're really facing commitment
[3:43]for the first time.
[3:44]It's easy to feel like you're into commitment and into love when you're chasing people
[3:49]and trying to get a commitment out of them and trying to make things work, and he just
[3:54]won't quite show up, and he won't quite answer my questions.
[3:57]But when someone is standing in front of you loving you and saying, I'm not going anywhere,
[4:02]that's when your avoidant self comes out and says, get me the hell out of here, I'm done.
[4:06]I can't, you know, because you have to face yourself once that happens.
[4:10]So that's really what the book is about.
[4:13]That's what I set out to write.
[4:14]Now, did I end up writing the, you know, great marriage guide to great marriages, you
[4:20]know, hello, from on high, welcome to my land of amazing marriages?
[4:25]No, I ended up challenging my own marriage, having a bunch of breakdowns, COVID set in.
[4:33]I mean, all of these chaotic elements came into my life, and so yeah, the book turned
[4:38]out a little differently than I expected in some ways.
[4:42]The book has, people have very strong feelings about airing the, what's the expression,
[4:48]dirty, dirty laundry or whatever else about what's going on.
[4:51]I love that you did this.
[4:54]I am like a huge fan.
[4:55]I feel like people don't talk enough about what goes on and that makes people sometimes
[5:00]worry.
[5:01]I think about their own marriages or feel like, how are we supposed to know what's normal?
[5:06]We have nothing to compare it to and like, am I happy enough?
[5:10]Is this what it's supposed to be like?
[5:12]So I actually really welcome this sort of new crop of books about the reality of marriage.
[5:18]But I watched the clip on the view.
[5:21]Did you watch that?
[5:22]I mean, you must have or maybe didn't.
[5:24]Yeah.
[5:25]No, I did.
[5:26]I saw it.
[5:27]Someone sounds like, you know, people have very strong feelings.
[5:29]What do you make of that?
[5:30]Right?
[5:31]Some people think you shouldn't be that it's really mean to your husband and I didn't
[5:34]get that vibe at all.
[5:36]When I read it, I was like, okay, he's laid back enough that he's cool with us, right?
[5:41]He just wants her to do what's right for her book and that's amazing.
[5:44]And, you know, I actually give him lots of credit for being willing to have himself
[5:49]written about like this and you for doing it.
[5:51]But I felt like the end result was so awesome that, you know, if you're comfortable with
[5:57]it, why should anybody else judge it?
[6:00]So I don't know.
[6:01]What do you think?
[6:02]To be fair, everyone has their different comfort zones, right?
[6:06]Like to be sort of like a compassionate about it.
[6:10]There are things that I would not, I wouldn't dream of writing about that other people write
[6:15]about and I'm like, why don't you, why don't you go there?
[6:18]Why did he do that?
[6:19]And I think that that's normal.
[6:22]I think marriage is a big don't touch it area for plenty of people.
[6:27]So I sort of anticipated that there would be some mixed feelings about this book and that
[6:31]people would, I don't know, the problem with questions that involve women's emotions
[6:37]and marriage and women in marriage and mothers and wives, people move into sort of, you
[6:43]know, their anger becomes moralistic in these areas, you know, it's like you suddenly,
[6:49]it's not just, I wouldn't do that.
[6:51]I wouldn't, I don't think that's right to like, that's, you know what, that's a sin.
[6:55]That's wrong.
[6:56]Like what you did, I think one of the hosts on the view said something like, yeah, that's
[7:01]still true, but she wrote it down and also she's, she was just staring it.
[7:06]I think they have two blurbs from the book.
[7:08]One was snoring a heap of meat, just how I described my husband at one point and another
[7:14]was smelly heap of laundry and that seemed to be the extent of what they'd written, but
[7:20]they read from the book.
[7:22]And so she was saying, I hate this, she was just looking at those words, I hate this.
[7:27]I love it.
[7:28]It's so passionate.
[7:29]It's like this woman is doing, you know, she's sinning against her husband and the world
[7:36]by calling him these insults, these names, but the thing is within a book, I mean, the book
[7:42]is written.
[7:43]I'm a writer.
[7:44]I've been writing for 20 years within the book, that's an image I use to explain.
[7:51]I mean, smelly heap of laundry is, it's an image I use to explain the feeling of waking
[7:57]up in your house and there's someone there in the way, you know.
[8:01]It's not that, it's not that you don't want to say, here's my husband, I love him.
[8:07]They're just mornings.
[8:08]I want to capture the feeling of you wake up some mornings and there's an obstacle.
[8:13]What is the obstacle made of?
[8:15]Is it made of dirty laundry?
[8:16]That's the most, you know, for a mother and a parent, that's the most obvious thing that
[8:22]it could be made of.
[8:23]Oh, it's made of man that's not, that hasn't as coffee yet, you know, and it also smells
[8:28]like dirty laundry, get it out of my way so I can go about my day.
[8:33]I wanted, you know, I set out when I wrote that to capture the feeling of one part
[8:40]of a marriage and my goal with the book was how do I get all of the textures of living
[8:46]with someone and tolerating them and knowing that you really don't want to leave them
[8:53]ever, knowing that you need them.
[8:56]Like how does it feel to realize that you'll never escape and you shouldn't escape,
[9:03]but part of you wants to escape sometimes, you know, how do you, how do you confront
[9:07]that?
[9:08]And it's not a conversation that we have very often in our culture.
[9:12]So I thought it was, I was attracted to it for that reason, not just to make people mad.
[9:16]I mean, that's one benefit.
[9:18]I mean, I think it's kind of fun that people are getting mad at it.
[9:22]It's also though frustrating because it's a good book and it's a funny book.
[9:27]And I feel like it's strange that it's been reduced to wife is a bitch, hates her husband.
[9:35]So that's frustrating.
[9:36]I could see that being frustrating because that's not at all what this book is.
[9:40]Not to mention you're, again, with like how you write about it is so funny and incisive
[9:47]and just awesome.
[9:48]I have to read a few more examples if you don't mind.
[9:52]I want every romantic comedy to open on a couple's first detailed discussion of past dental
[9:56]work and I wanted to end with a two hour long game of monopoly in which are dashing here.
[10:00]or it was forced to mortgage boardwalk,
[10:02]then he has a spectacular meltdown
[10:03]and quits the game in a blizzard of fake money
[10:05]and flying red plastic hotels.
[10:07]Whether we know it consciously or only sense it subconsciously,
[10:10]we have some shared murky awareness
[10:13]that hatred and love are the same thing.
[10:15]You love what you hate and hate what you love.
[10:17]Your hatred has power,
[10:19]because it points back to your weaknesses,
[10:20]your hatred makes you feel small and helpless.
[10:23]Your hatred gives you a motive and attraction,
[10:25]a reason to try.
[10:26]Your hatred fuels you, your hatred turns you on, in other words.
[10:29]You have to bring every tool and every strength
[10:31]that you're disposal when you do battle against something you hate.
[10:34]See how we're talking about sex now?
[10:36]Nothing is hotter than hating someone
[10:37]and then joining forces with them
[10:39]or trying to join them in failing.
[10:41]And V is in the mix too.
[10:43]Anyway, that goes on and it's so great.
[10:45]And then wait until then.
[10:47]I see Bill with a scorching clarity that pains me.
[10:49]This is why surviving a marriage requires
[10:51]turning down the volume on your spouse.
[10:53]So you can barely hear what they're saying.
[10:55]You must do this not only so you don't overdose
[10:57]on the same, stultifying words and phrases
[10:59]within the first year,
[11:00]but also so your spouse is various grunts and sneezes
[11:02]and snorts and throat-clearing.
[11:04]Don't serve as a magic flute that causes you
[11:06]to wander out the front door and into the wilderness
[11:08]never to return.
[11:09]When Bill sneezes, it's like a blast from an air horn
[11:12]aimed at your face no matter where he is
[11:14]and the house's sneezes are excruciatingly loud.
[11:16]And then that whole chapter was like genius, by the way,
[11:18]because you kept even like the end of the next page.
[11:21]Bill is drawing his hands quietly.
[11:23]He hasn't made a sound for a while.
[11:24]He'll just blue his nose, then gas, then clear his throat again.
[11:28]Oh my God, you're so funny.
[11:28]Okay, one more.
[11:29]I took a few of those out for the excerpt, too.
[11:32]I mean, some of those, everyone complained about the
[11:35]Flemmy sounds, but I actually deleted a few Flemmy sounds
[11:39]to in order to, you know.
[11:41]Oh, now I'm disappointed that I picked whenever I was
[11:44]excerpted.
[11:45]This is what I feel to me.
[11:46]Yeah.
[11:47]And then the last one for now, this was about your funny
[11:50]author crush, which I loved.
[11:52]We can talk about that.
[11:53]But Bill said, why do you care about this so much?
[11:55]And he said, I don't know.
[11:56]The question alone made me pathetic, maybe feel pathetic,
[11:58]because I'm old, I said, bursting into tears.
[12:01]I'm old and you're old and nothing new is ever going to happen
[12:04]to us.
[12:04]We're going to die soon and we'll never do anything exciting
[12:07]or weird or crazy before then.
[12:08]We'll just get older and older and everything will stay
[12:11]exactly the same until we're dead.
[12:13]I was right that death was closer than we thought,
[12:15]but I was wrong that nothing would ever change.
[12:16]Everything was about to go haywire.
[12:18]And you did speak early in the book about how the
[12:21]sign of a successful marriage is death, which is crazy.
[12:24]You can't really succeed.
[12:26]You have to die.
[12:27]Yeah, you don't.
[12:28]I mean, that was something that among many things,
[12:32]when I said to Hunter write the book, I'm a writer.
[12:36]I thought about what is marriage and why do we do it?
[12:39]And I challenged myself to pick marriage apart,
[12:43]think about it as a construct.
[12:44]I mean, I went into it with this idea
[12:47]that I was going to expose how it can be difficult,
[12:50]but how ultimately marriage is amazing and great.
[12:53]And of course we love it.
[12:55]And then when I started to think about what marriage
[12:58]actually is, it was like, God, it's funny how many ways
[13:02]we can fail at marriage.
[13:04]It's so easy to fail.
[13:05]If one of you doesn't die, you failed by definition.
[13:09]And that's just sick and crazy.
[13:11]But by the same token, I also, I mean, it's interesting
[13:16]because I sort of learned the benefit
[13:18]of sticking with a commitment along the way,
[13:22]not only because I had to write about what was okay,
[13:28]because I held myself to writing a real view of my marriage.
[13:32]And because I wanted to be completely honest
[13:35]about the weaknesses of my marriage,
[13:36]I also had to address the weaknesses.
[13:39]And there were points when I thought,
[13:42]why am I talking about marriage?
[13:44]We don't have a perfect marriage.
[13:45]Is our marriage really passionate enough?
[13:48]And I would question, are we really communicating
[13:51]on the level that I want to communicate?
[13:53]Are we communing as much as I sort of romanticize
[13:58]inside my mind?
[14:00]And the crush was definitely a piece of that.
[14:02]It was like, why am I able to create this imaginary world
[14:06]around this fictional character I've created?
[14:09]This person I don't know when I'm not creating
[14:12]an imaginary world around my husband as much?
[14:14]Like how does that work?
[14:16]Why am I doing that?
[14:18]And so by looking at some of these things,
[14:21]I sort of ended up finding, strengthening my connection
[14:25]to my husband, but it took kind of crawling
[14:27]on our hands and knees and also feeling a little threatened
[14:31]by the book itself.
[14:32]Not because people were going to,
[14:34]oh, would be humiliating if people knew this stuff.
[14:36]I mean, there were certainly times
[14:38]when I thought, Jesus, I don't want to tell anyone
[14:41]any of these things, like where I was just hiding
[14:43]from the book, but once the sort of felt like a thing
[14:48]and felt whole, and once I had edited enough
[14:51]and the process was just working
[14:53]and it was getting more entertaining and more,
[14:55]I mean, the thing is you can't,
[14:57]I'm interrupting myself, but basically,
[15:00]once something becomes good,
[15:02]you don't feel humiliated by it.
[15:04]Even if you, as long as you are comfortable
[15:07]with the disclosures that you chose to make,
[15:10]I mean, I think that I became comfortable
[15:13]with the disclosure about the crush,
[15:16]partially because I became comfortable
[15:18]with the idea that it was just very much human nature
[15:22]to have a crush 15 years into a marriage
[15:24]and that the crush doesn't have to be humiliating.
[15:28]It doesn't have to be upsetting or dumb.
[15:32]It doesn't have to make you feel stupid.
[15:34]It just is, it's just part of being alive.
[15:37]You feel something and you, I mean, okay,
[15:41]so where did we start?
[15:42]I'm kind of picking different pictures
[15:45]and stuff like that.
[15:46]You know, so I host this podcast,
[15:49]I co-host a podcast called Sex Talk with Vivian Tracey
[15:51]and we talk about like all these anonymous questions
[15:54]that come in in one person.
[15:55]This week, I had a question about a crush
[15:57]and I actually talked about your book on that show
[15:59]because I was like, well, let me give you an example
[16:01]of a crush and how you went home
[16:04]when at least at first when you thought
[16:06]that somebody was like,
[16:07]let's see what you under the table
[16:09]and you came back and told your husband about it
[16:11]and you were like, this is amazing
[16:12]and he kind of got into it.
[16:13]He's like, are you going to see him?
[16:14]Are you going to talk to him?
[16:15]Like, how's it going?
[16:16]And he became almost like this conspirators
[16:19]that co-conspirator in this thing
[16:22]and like, it was like almost happening to both of you.
[16:24]Anyway, I said that on the show and Tracey,
[16:26]my co-host has been like an expert for 17 years.
[16:28]She's like, that is the sign of a happy marriage.
[16:30]That is a very healthy relationship.
[16:32]She's ready.
[16:33]So anyway.
[16:34]Well, I still do care.
[16:36]I'll still do the episode when it comes out
[16:37]just so you can hear us talking about your life.
[16:39]But that's funny.
[16:40]But really being able to take a crush into your relationship
[16:43]and own it and talk about it
[16:45]because crush has happened and it's okay and it's normal.
[16:47]But it's how you deal with it with your spouse,
[16:49]your partner that makes all the difference.
[16:51]So anyway.
[16:52]Yeah, I mean, it was an adventure.
[16:54]I don't think that I, at the very beginning,
[16:57]you know, straight out of the gate,
[16:58]it was just obvious that I would tell him.
[17:00]It was like, I didn't have a crush yet.
[17:03]I was just, that was just the beginning.
[17:05]Yeah, that was just reporting on something that happened.
[17:07]And I was like, oh my God, this thing happened.
[17:09]Can you believe that people have affairs?
[17:11]It's so weird.
[17:12]Like what, does this guy just go around,
[17:14]scream people all the time?
[17:15]Like how does that happen?
[17:16]And then, you know, Bill left town and I was like,
[17:19]oh my God, people go around.
[17:21]What's that like, how's that look?
[17:25]I wonder why he wanted to hit on me.
[17:29]What does it, what is it, what is it like about me?
[17:30]I just like to hear,
[17:31]maybe I could just have a drink with him
[17:33]and he could tell me all about the thing.
[17:35]So exciting about me that made him take an action.
[17:40]And so it becomes this ridiculous like fantasy vanity project,
[17:44]which is, you know, kind of awful and pathetic,
[17:47]but it's also just being a woman who's alive
[17:51]and in the world.
[17:52]I mean, in some ways it, I mean,
[17:55]I write about this in the book.
[17:56]It motivated me to make my life a little bigger
[17:59]because if this small thing could make me feel,
[18:03]ooh, you know, it was just, it was for a long time,
[18:07]it was just so embarrassing that something so small
[18:10]could matter so much to me.
[18:12]And it just said something about the fact that,
[18:15]wow, maybe to get out more,
[18:17]that you just, you know, you find it so incredible
[18:21]that someone could be attracted to you and take action
[18:23]because of it like, why are you living that way?
[18:26]You should be out in the world more
[18:28]if this is how you're thinking about yourself.
[18:30]So that was one good thing,
[18:32]but it was definitely not all.
[18:34]We have a great relationship
[18:35]and we'll just keep talking about this.
[18:36]I mean, Bill called me from out of town and said,
[18:39]and I said, oh my God, I've been thinking about the crush
[18:42]and I didn't, I didn't, you know,
[18:43]I didn't say the crush obviously.
[18:45]I said, I've been thinking about that guy who kicked me
[18:47]and I don't know, it's so weird and I'm sorry, you know?
[18:51]And he was like, whatever, no big deal that, you know,
[18:54]people do this sometimes they fantasize, it's fine.
[18:57]And then, but then it went on and on
[18:59]where I was trying, I couldn't get, I mean,
[19:02]not to spoil the end of that chapter
[19:04]because it's a really good story.
[19:05]I won't, it's a great story.
[19:07]But I couldn't understand why I didn't, was it,
[19:11]I couldn't, I didn't want to dig for information
[19:15]but I wanted to know why, you know?
[19:18]I wanted some acknowledgement that, okay,
[19:21]you know, you hit on me, right?
[19:23]Like we remember that, I never got it.
[19:25]I mean, a month went on and I was like,
[19:27]we were kind of just very casually in touch about nothing.
[19:31]And I was like, when is he gonna say like,
[19:34]hey, by the way, nothing?
[19:36]So it create, you know, just not knowing something
[19:40]of the fire, which was also absurd.
[19:43]And so I mean, I think that in some ways
[19:45]our marriages are these little planets, right?
[19:48]That we live on.
[19:49]And then when, you know, a meteor comes
[19:51]and it's just a bunch of rocks, but you're like,
[19:53]oh my God, I saw something, you know?
[19:55]And I think that isolation and alienation
[19:59]from the outside.
[20:00]that a marriage can sometimes create is,
[20:03]it's, I think it's generative and interesting
[20:05]to look at that, you know, and explore it
[20:07]and ask yourself, what am I missing
[20:09]that I care so much about some that's so small?
[20:12]Like, what do we need?
[20:13]And so we found a bunch of things
[20:14]that we actually felt like we needed
[20:17]just from that experience.
[20:19]And, you know, it was great for the book.
[20:21]It was like an interesting,
[20:22]I, you know, I don't linger on it that much
[20:24]because there's all of this little kids era,
[20:27]beginning of relationship.
[20:29]I mean, there's a second book to be written about, you know,
[20:33]even just the last three chapters of the book,
[20:35]everything goes haywire.
[20:37]And I didn't want it to be about the pandemic or now,
[20:40]you know, I get diagnosed with cancer.
[20:42]I don't think it's clear in the book
[20:43]that it's that I really got diagnosed with cancer
[20:46]because there was like a false alarm at first.
[20:47]But, you know, you can't take your book
[20:49]and then just drive it off a cliff
[20:51]and all this stuff happened, oh well.
[20:53]And so one of the challenges of writing the book
[20:55]was going in and saying,
[20:57]how do I make this a coherent narrative
[21:00]based on what actually is happening, you know?
[21:02]And where's the stopping point where it makes sense
[21:05]to say, you know, okay, like these things have happened
[21:10]and where are we now?
[21:11]And luckily, Jesus, luckily, we were kind of in
[21:15]this really good place by the end.
[21:19]But I also wanted to build into the end of the book
[21:22]a little bit of things change
[21:24]and you're in a different place almost every day
[21:27]if not every year within your marriage
[21:30]and that's normal.
[21:32]And you can repeat what you believe in
[21:35]but you're really just talking about beliefs
[21:37]and you can have a real commitment and that's real.
[21:41]I mean, I feel very committed to my marriage
[21:44]but it's also true that people change in things change
[21:48]and it's helpful to have a compassionate stance about that
[21:53]because that's just the kind of place you want to,
[21:57]that's the energy you want to bring to your marriage
[21:59]in the first place.
[22:00]You know, you're dealing with a living breathing human being
[22:03]who has new needs and new desires and new dreams all the time.
[22:07]Here's my question.
[22:08]We have friends getting married this weekend.
[22:11]Do I bring this book to them or not?
[22:13]Do we want people who are setting out on a marriage
[22:16]to know all the nitty gritty of what happens?
[22:19]Years and years in is it better to not know
[22:22]and to go in blind or do we think that it helps
[22:25]to know at the outset?
[22:26]I think it would be really good for them.
[22:28]I mean, you know, I have no single people who are saying,
[22:32]I feel like I could maybe be married
[22:33]and I never thought that I could be married before
[22:35]after reading this book.
[22:37]I feel like it's kind of like you,
[22:42]there are dramatic ways of talking about
[22:44]and also just acknowledging, okay,
[22:48]acknowledging the drama that exists
[22:50]within human relationships is it can be kind of a harrowing
[22:55]to say, you know, there's, you know, love is also hate
[22:59]and there's a reason why romantic comedies usually have two
[23:02]people who get on each other's nerves and then they kiss.
[23:05]Yeah, so, but those words, I mean,
[23:08]some people are just afraid of words, right?
[23:11]Or they're afraid of the depth of feeling
[23:14]and also the darkness that hides behind all lightness
[23:19]and the, you know, the inseparable nature of the,
[23:22]just the gray areas and anything.
[23:25]A lot of people want you to just know
[23:27]they're happy marriages and unhappy marriages
[23:29]and you figure out which one you have
[23:31]and if you're about when you quit it
[23:33]and if you're in a good one, you stick with it.
[23:34]And I think that acknowledging how complicated
[23:40]and also how simple a marriage can be
[23:43]and acknowledging the fact that the one thing
[23:46]that's gonna get you through the messy times
[23:49]is just a forgiveness of yourself
[23:52]and a forgiveness of the other person.
[23:54]And so once you can forgive each other
[23:56]for just being the filthy animals that you are,
[23:59]you create this space where you feel more alive
[24:03]because you're welcoming in your emotions.
[24:05]It's strange to, you know, get hit on
[24:09]and then enjoy the fact that you got hit on
[24:13]within a marriage with someone else, you know?
[24:16]But it's also, if you didn't do that,
[24:19]if you just said, I don't know, something happened
[24:20]and you buried it and then 10 years later had an affair,
[24:24]you know, it's just, that's a less joyful way of living.
[24:28]It's good to live inside reality with another person.
[24:31]It's acknowledge, you know, your emotional reality.
[24:34]So I feel like the fact that, you know,
[24:39]knowing that you're gonna fail within a marriage a lot,
[24:42]I feel like really, I think that would have helped me.
[24:45]I didn't know that I would feel,
[24:49]especially in the early days of my marriage,
[24:50]I kind of felt like, wow, we're just really hitting
[24:53]this out of the park.
[24:53]Like we belong together, this is great.
[24:56]And when you have little kids,
[24:57]you're just like, look at our beautiful children
[25:00]and us, we're just getting, you know,
[25:02]this is the dream we're doing so well,
[25:04]even when things are kind of,
[25:06]even when the wheels are coming off,
[25:08]it's still sort of like, yeah, yeah, you know,
[25:11]it's cool.
[25:12]This is chaos, we've been warned about this.
[25:15]It's almost like when you settle in for the long haul
[25:19]and you start to say, oh my God,
[25:22]like I'm not just not as good as I thought I was,
[25:25]you know, like you have this time in your life
[25:27]for you to just like, you know, wow,
[25:29]you're not, you're not, you know,
[25:32]the gloss kind of comes off.
[25:34]I don't know, I just, I'm kind of,
[25:36]I think that it's like a gift to people to be able to say,
[25:40]I think I'm gonna give it, is the answer.
[25:42]Yeah, I'm gonna give it to them.
[25:43]And we'll see if they get her call me again.
[25:46]Okay, I know where I was at a time.
[25:48]What advice would you have to aspiring authors?
[25:50]Oh, find a way to protect your strange impulses
[25:57]from the outside world until you develop a faith
[26:01]in your weird.
[26:03]I have a songwriter friend who calls it your homeland.
[26:07]Like you treasure and encourage your native voice.
[26:12]People call it finding your voice,
[26:13]but that sounds like a journey somewhere else.
[26:15]And I would say it's more like figure out what your homeland
[26:19]is, figure out what you really believe in and love
[26:22]and what you enjoy on the page, you know, from yourself.
[26:26]And then find a way to keep, you know,
[26:30]keep out, not constructive criticism and feedback.
[26:35]But when it comes to your, your just key things
[26:38]that make you who you are, find a way to really nurture
[26:41]and encourage and fertilize those things.
[26:44]Of it, amazing.
[26:46]Well, I am now a huge, huge fan of yours.
[26:50]I will read whatever you write next.
[26:51]I'm so excited.
[26:52]No, I'm serious.
[26:53]I love your voice.
[26:55]I really do.
[26:56]So I'm glad that that was your advice
[26:58]because it's funny.
[26:59]And again, I'm telling you, like go through
[27:01]and pick out some of these little lines
[27:04]because like there were at least 50
[27:08]that I was like, I should put this on my bulletin board.
[27:10]Whoa, okay.
[27:12]All right.
[27:12]That's my next assignment.
[27:13]That's your next assignment.
[27:15]You can do so much.
[27:16]You're like tag me quietly or forward it to me after.
[27:18]Yeah, retweet that or something.
[27:21]Yeah, I'll tag you.
[27:22]I'll tag you.
[27:23]You're going to get tired of the, no, I'm not.
[27:25]I love it.
[27:26]People are going to think I'm like miserable
[27:27]in my marriage or something.
[27:28]Like, why did you tag me, Debbie?
[27:30]What is this mean?
[27:31]That's it.
[27:32]Any questions for Zibi?
[27:33]Yeah, exactly.
[27:34]Anyway, okay, thank you so much.
[27:36]And it was great to be in touch.
[27:39]Yeah, it was so fun.
[27:40]Thank you.
[27:40]All right.
[27:41]Bye.
[27:44]Hi, I'm Zibi Owens
[27:45]and you're listening to the award-winning podcast.
[27:47]Moms don't have time to read books.
[27:49]If you like this podcast,
[27:50]you will love my new anthology called Moms
[27:53]Don't Have Time to Have Kids.
[27:55]Check it out and you'll hear from 49 authors
[27:57]about all sorts of things.
[27:58]Moms don't have time to do.
[28:00]All the authors have been on this podcast.
[28:02]Also, check out my TikTok at with Zibi and Tracy.
[28:05]My other podcast, Sex Talk with Zibi and Tracy.
[28:08]Check out Moms Don't Have Time to Write on Medium.
[28:10]And of course, my new publishing company called Zibi books.
[28:14]And now back to our daily author interview site
[28:17]and a quick hello from some of my kids.
[28:19]Hi, hello.
[28:20]Enjoy the show.