The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship (Unabridged)
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3.8 • 14 Ratings
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
In
The Three Marriages, David Whyte, the best-selling author, poet, and speaker, asks you to think about your significant relationship to your partner, your work and your inner self in a radically different way by drawing them into a mutually supportive conversation.
According to Whyte, we humans are involved not just with one marriage with a significant other. We also have made secret vows to our work and unspoken vows to an inner, constantly developing self. These Three Marriages constantly surprise us, and they demand larger and renewed dedication as the years go by. Whyte's thesis is that to separate these marriages in order to balance them is to destroy the fabric of happiness itself; that in each of these marriages, will, effort, and hard work are overused, overrated, and in many ways self-defeating. Happiness, Whyte says, is possible, but only if we re-imagine how we inhabit the worlds of love, work, and self-understanding.
Whyte argues that it is not possible to sacrifice one marriage for any of the others without causing deep psychological damage. He looks to a different way of seeing and bringing these relationships together and invites us to examine each marriage with a fierce but affectionate eye as he shows the nonnegotiable nature at the core of each commitment.
Only by understanding the journey involved in each of the Three Marriages and the stages of their maturation, he says, can we understand how to bring them together in one fulfilled life.
Customer Reviews
Blending work, relationships, and the self.
I've been a fan of David Whyte for quite a while now, since at least the late '90's when I really began to look at my place in the world and how I belonged (or didn't). A "corporate poet", he uses poetry, both his and others, to show how we should approach life, being bold and vulnerable, willing to fall and get hurt in order to grow.
In THE THREE MARRIAGES, he follows several poets, writers, and historical figures through their lives to show how they tackled life in regards to a work or vocation, relationships with friends and specifically a husband or wife, and the most intimate marriage of all, the one with ourselves. Instead of finding balance between the three, finding an equilibrium that keeps them separate, he suggests that they feed each other, blending to create a full, satisfying life, and that to diminish one for the sake of another actually diminishes both or all three.
I read the hardcover when it first came out, and found it a bit obtuse and hard to fathom. The audio book I found much easier to absorb, a chapter here and there read in Whyte's slight Welsh accent much clearer to understand what he is trying to say. There is very little poetry in this book, but plenty of philosophy and material to contemplate and consider, including more than a little Zen, but no matter your religious tradition this is a great book for trying to come to terms with how full your life can be if you pay attention to all aspects, and keep the conversation between the three marriages flowing and involved.
Fascinating book
I read this a few years back, when I needed to understand that the choice in life is not between relationship and profession. Instead, we are called to honor (not necessarily balance) three parts of our lives - self, relationship(s), and profession. I loved the way Whyte uses the remarkable lives of Jane Austen, Pema Chodron, and Robt Lewis Stevenson, among others, to illustrate how we honor these parts of our lives quite differently. It is a great, fun read!