How to Be a Person in the World

Heather Havrilesky writes the Ask Polly and Ask Molly newsletters. Her latest book is Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage.

“It’s not a good story when you're bullshitting people. I didn't want this book to feel like bullshit…. I wanted to show enough that you could feel reassured that it's normal to feel conflicted about your life and the people in it. It's normal to feel anxious about how much people love you. And it's normal to feel avoidant about how much people love you. It's normal to feel like a failure in the face of trying to stay with someone over the course of your entire life.”

Show notes:

• @hhavrilesky
•  Havrilesky on Longform
•  Havrilesky on Longform Podcast
• Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage (Ecco • 2022)
• 1:00 "US author, 51, confesses she 'hates' her husband of 16 years in new memoir about what marriage is REALLY like - as she compares him to 'a pointy Lego brick underfoot' and 'a snoring heap of meat' (but they're not splitting up)" (Harriet Johnson • Daily Mail • Feb 2022)
• 01:00 "Woman Claims She “Hates” Husband In Memoir" (The View)
• 06:00 Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead Books • 2011)
• 06:00 What If This Were Enough? (Anchor • 2019)
• 06:00 Havrilesky's New York archive
• 06:00 askpolly.substack.com
• 06:00 askmolly.substack.com
• 11:00 "Heather Havrilesky Compares Her Husband to a Heap of Laundry" (Walter Kirn • New York Times • Feb 2022)
• 12:00 "Marriage Requires Amnesia" (New York Times • Dec 2021)
• 14:00 "Heather Havrilesky on hating her husband and her tell-all memoir, Foreverland" (Willy Somma • Times UK • Feb 2022)
• 15:00 "Wife calls marriage ‘insane,’ hates her husband: ‘Snoring heap of meat’" (Andrew Court • New York Post • Feb 2022)
• 27:00 How to Be a Person in the World (Anchor • 2017)
• 32:00 "Our ‘Mommy’ Problem" (New York Times • Nov 2014)
• 48:00 Havrilesky’s Twitter thread addressing The View (Mar 2022)

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