How to Screw Up Your Marriage

Let's face it. People keep getting married. Yet over 40% of first marriages end in divorce and up to 67% of second do, too, with statistics becoming predictably more dismal as the number of trips to the altar rack up. It seems like, for many of us, the longing to be half of a couple so in love they make other people want to puke is too strong to ignore. The problem is, we've all grown up to expect that fairytale endings happen by accident, that if we wish upon a star, or let down our golden hair, then, blammo, we'll get our happily ever after. In other words, we're lazy and feel entitled to have the one thing we want most in the world - the one thing we should work hardest to create and nurture - without doing squat to make our dreams reality.

We fall in love, we marry, we pout, we nag, we sulk, and we sabotage. How to Screw Up Your Marriage interrupts the pity party with a no-nonsense formula for couplehood success, written by a human relations expert who is herself in a wonderfully nauseating marriage with a passel of his and hers kids. 2nd Place, 2012 Houston Writers Guild Narrative Nonfiction Manuscript Contest.