But You Seemed So Happy: A Marriage, in Pieces and Bits

by Kimberly Harrington

Overview

In this tender, funny, and sharp companion to her acclaimed memoir-in-essays Amateur Hour, Kimberly Harrington explores and confronts marriage, divorce, and the ways love, loss, and longing shape a life.

Six weeks after Kimberly and her husband announced their divorce, she began work on a book that she thought would only be about divorce — heavy on the dark humor with a light coating of anger and annoyance. After all, on the heels of planning to dissolve a twenty-year marriage they had chosen to still live together in the same house with their kids. Throw in a global pandemic and her idea of what the end of a marriage should look and feel like was flipped even further on its head.

This originally dark and caustic exploration turned into a more empathetic exercise, as she worked to understand what this relationship meant and why marriage matters so much. Over the course of two years of what was supposed to be a temporary period of transition, she sifted through her past—how she formed her ideas about relationships, sex, marriage, and divorce. And she dug back into the history of her marriage — how she and her future ex-husband had met, what it felt like to be madly in love, how they had changed over time, the impact having children had on their relationship, and what they still owed one another.

But You Seemed So Happy is a time capsule of sorts. It’s about getting older and repeatedly dying on the hill of being wiser, only to discover you were never all that dumb to begin with. It’s an honest, intimate biography of a marriage, from its heady, idealistic, and easy beginnings to it slowly coming apart and finally to its evolution into something completely unexpected. As she probes what it means when everyone assumes you’re happy as long as you’re still married, Harrington skewers engagement photos, Gen X singularity, small-town busybodies, and the casual way we make life-altering decisions when we’re young. Ultimately, this moving and funny memoir in essays is a vulnerable and irreverent act of forgiveness—of ourselves, our partners, and the relationships that have run their course but will always hold profound and permanent meaning in our lives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780063143005
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	10/05/2021
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Kimberly Harrington is the author of Amateur Hour: Motherhood in Essays and Swear Words and But You Seemed So Happy: A Marriage, In Pieces and Bits. Her work is included in the collections Merciless & Unpredictable: A McSweeney's Guide to Parenting and Keep Scrolling Till You Feel Something: Twenty-One Years of Humor From McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. She’s a columnist and regular contributor to McSweeney’s and her work has also appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times, and The Cut. A long-time copywriter and creative director for design studios and brands, her clients have included Apple, Nike, and Netflix.

Table of Contents

Preface : My Little Homewrecker xiii

Prologue : The Honeymoon 1

Me

Maiden 11

Say Thank You 13

What to Expect When You're Expecting to Be a Gen X Girl 25

Notes From Family Living Class 31

Teenage Dirtbag 33

These Are the Things I Know about Myself 39

Marriage

A Relationship History, in Brief 45

A Portrait of the Man and the Moment 47

Some Questions for Men in Engagement Photos 59

Philosophical Frogs 63

Why Did You Get Married? 75

Life Is Better on Weed 79

Now That We've Had a Baby My Terms and Conditions Have Changed 93

Everybody Wants Some 99

How to Fix Your Hedonic Treadmill 103

DIY Marriage Therapy 105

Contempt, and Other Things Familiarity Breeds 121

Funny Story 123

And You May Ask Yourself, Well, How Did I Get Here? 135

"Divorce"

Lightbulbs 145

How to Punch Your Kids in the Face 149

Hi, We're Getting a Divorce 157

Thank You, Acquaintance, for the Very Good Advice on How to Save My Marriage 165

Looking at Strangers 169

The Unbelievably Boring but True Tale for Divorce Witch 177

The Anglerfish 183

Things People Say When You Get Divorced That They Really Should Say When You Get Engaged 213

Nuts and Bolts 215

Creating Our Grief 219

When Sally Divorced Harry 231

Epilogue: Adult Swim 245

Reading List 277

Acknowledgments 279

Editorial Reviews

Kimberly Harrington is back with another honest, tender, and often hilarious book on the end of a modern marriage. No matter your relationship status, But You Seemed So Happy begs the question– what are we all doing here? I laughed, I cried, I found myself in the pages over and over again.” — Kate Baer, New York Times bestselling author of What Kind of Woman: Poems

“Intimate and raw yet meticulously scrubbed of the slightest tinge of self-pity. Harrington explores the pain and intricacies of a marriage and its dissolution with a ruthless, unflinching honesty and gallows humor that makes you feel like you buried a body with her. Did you? Maybe you did.” — Emily Flake, cartoonist for The New Yorker

“I can’t remember a book about divorce I liked as much since Nora Ephron wrote Heartburn.” — Kim France, founding editor of Lucky magazine and co-host of Everything is Fine podcast

“In her compassionate treatment of a touchy subject, Harrington flips the divorce narrative on its head to underscore the beauty of choosing one’s own path.” — Publishers Weekly

"Brimming with witty observations, biting humor, and thoughtful commentary on courtship, marriage, parenting, happiness, inertia, and yes, divorce." — Booklist

"A brilliant collection of essays, this deeply felt, clever tome is a 'biography of a marriage,' as we watch one couple’s issues throughout the years . . . I dove into this one head first and was delighted by the freshness of the material, the insights, the humor, the emotions, and what happens behind someone else’s bedroom door." — Katie Couric Media

“Though each piece is decidedly personal, the collection feels universal, encouraging all readers—partnered or not, happily or less so—to reexamine the common narratives around marriage and divorce . . . . Often vulnerable and deeply funny.” — Shelf Awareness

From the Publisher

"A brilliant collection of essays, this deeply felt, clever tome is a 'biography of a marriage,' as we watch one couple’s issues throughout the years . . . I dove into this one head first and was delighted by the freshness of the material, the insights, the humor, the emotions, and what happens behind someone else’s bedroom door."

Katie Couric Media

Kimberly Harrington is back with another honest, tender, and often hilarious book on the end of a modern marriage. No matter your relationship status, But You Seemed So Happy begs the question– what are we all doing here? I laughed, I cried, I found myself in the pages over and over again.

Kate Baer

"Brimming with witty observations, biting humor, and thoughtful commentary on courtship, marriage, parenting, happiness, inertia, and yes, divorce."

Booklist

Amateur Hour is a feisty, arresting collection of essays that bring intimate laughter and tears often in the same breath. In a world of endless mommy tell-alls that feel like the literary equivalent of house chardonnay, this is top-shelf whiskey.

Electric Literature on AMATEUR HOUR

"Brimming with witty observations, biting humor, and thoughtful commentary on courtship, marriage, parenting, happiness, inertia, and yes, divorce."

Booklist

Amateur Hour finds Kimberly Harrington as funny, cutting, honest, and brilliant as ever.

Christopher Monks

Kimberly Harrington deftly and hilariously uncovers all of the lies and bullshit women are told about motherhood. This book made me laugh, sure, but it also made me feel seen.”  

Jennifer Romolini

With her trademark humor, Kimberly Harrington tackles the nitty-gritty aspects of motherhood in Amateur Hour. More concerned with brutal honesty than keeping up appearances, she bears all in frank prose covering everything from the senior pictures to her deep-seated desire for more family fights—and isn’t afraid to dish it out, either. Required reading for Mother’s Day (and every subsequent day after) is her piece demanding that mothers be given more than one day each year to be celebrated.

Ms. Magazine on AMATEUR HOUR

Kimberly Harrington is one tough mother. Filled with the blunt, witty observations... Amateur Hour is a candid look at both the joys and horrors of family life, including pregnancy loss, marital strife and the guilt and exhaustion of “work-life balance.

Salon

07/12/2021

In these piercing essays, Harrington (Amateur Hour) performs an autopsy on her deteriorating marriage and her decision to divorce her husband of 25 years. “We all hear the dramatic stories of divorce, but we don’t hear much about boring divorces. Or perfectly okay divorces,” she writes. Harrington’s divorce was just that: absolutely devoid of drama. There were no “affairs... nervous breakdowns,” just the realization that she simply wasn’t the same person as she was at 27, when she and her husband joined “The Path” of marriage that all their friends were on. Two children later (chronicled in a hilarious essay titled “Now That We’ve Had a Baby My Terms and Conditions Have Changed”) the passion faded, and, later, the “divorce conversations” set in. After much hand-wringing, though, Harrington and her husband both found peace in knowing their decision to end things was for the good of their kids, too: “Did I want them to learn about marriage from this marriage?” In her compassionate treatment of a touchy subject, Harrington flips the divorce narrative on its head to underscore the beauty of choosing one’s own path. Those struggling with the decision to stay or leave a marriage would do well to pick this up (and grab a highlighter). Agent: Ryan D. Harbage, the Fischer-Harbage Agency. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Though each piece is decidedly personal, the collection feels universal, encouraging all readers—partnered or not, happily or less so—to reexamine the common narratives around marriage and divorce . . . . Often vulnerable and deeply funny.

Shelf Awareness

Intimate and raw yet meticulously scrubbed of the slightest tinge of self-pity. Harrington explores the pain and intricacies of a marriage and its dissolution with a ruthless, unflinching honesty and gallows humor that makes you feel like you buried a body with her. Did you? Maybe you did.

Emily Flake

I can’t remember a book about divorce I liked as much since Nora Ephron wrote Heartburn.

Kim France

Kimberly Harrington is one tough mother. Filled with the blunt, witty observations... Amateur Hour is a candid look at both the joys and horrors of family life, including pregnancy loss, marital strife and the guilt and exhaustion of 'work-life balance.'

Salon on AMATEUR HOUR

Amateur Hour will make readers rotate through laughter, tears, and cringing, and are all written with refreshingly honest and bold abandon.

Allison Banner

It takes real talent to be consistently funny while sharing both your worst fears and greatest dreams. Kimberly Harrington is a mother of two who does just that with her debut collection… Whether she’s aiming for your funny bone or your heart, Harrington’s takes on motherhood are spot-on.

BookPage