March 22, 2022
I came across this book after I received an email from the author.
Dear Morgan –
I came across your blog via Kinkly. I come from another world to yours but it is equally conservative and restricted in what women are and aren’t supposed to conform to. Because of that, I’d like to share my book with you in the hope that you enjoy how I tackled coming into my own and breaking down those barriers over time.
Intrigued, I decided to take a look at this book. I am an avid reader, so I am always looking for new titles. I expected to read a tale of an errant housewife and her sexual adventures — but what I found instead was a profound examination of a marriage that didn’t last.
It is so easy to blame the husband in situations like this. However, Mitra does a full self-examination of her own faults in the marriage. This book covers everything from being the bride, to infertility, to post-partum depression, to counseling, to having an open marriage, to more counseling, and finally to divorce. It is a roller coaster, yet life often is that type of journey.
The first half of the book was difficult for me to read as many parts echoed my own marriage. I applaud her strength in meeting her challenges head-on, something I was unable to do. I read with more zeal of her experiences with an open marriage, something I now wish my husband would have allowed me to experience. Mitra’s husband, however, suffered from lack of desire, while mine was sidelined by disease and other medical problems. Yet I feel if he had let his jealousy go enough to want to truly see me happy (which he always inferred was his goal), perhaps our marriage could have been saved. Instead he kept subtle and often overt control over me in fears he would lose me. Obviously it did no good, as he lost me anyway.
Mitra was able to cajole her husband to therapy and other treatments, which I was unable to do with mine. Even now in Assisted Living, he still refuses to acknowledge his mental and emotional state. He is stuck in the mentality that men are not supposed to share their feelings, and that men have to be the head of household.
I pity him.
In the end, Mitra was able to remove herself from the situation with grace and with strength. She met each circumstance with inward reflection and with thoughts to keeping her family together. Her ultimate goal was to maintain her household, but not at the sacrifice of her own happiness. She realized in order to be a good mother, she had to be pleased with herself first. Only then could she have the confidence needed to raise her daughters as young women of power in this modern age. Mitra herself a highly successful woman, wanted to make sure her family could break the bonds of misogyny.
This book is certainly one to read if you are going through similar situations. Mitra can perhaps lead you to consider alternatives to try before deciding that your marriage cannot be saved.
Morgan Destera 