The All-or-Nothing Marriage

their own value system and living in accord with it (that is, people who live authentically) can build lives that are deeply fulfilling, even if there is no objective truth undergirding their value system.

“Between stimulus and response there is a space,” observes the psychiatrist Viktor Frankl. “In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

to reconcile the selfless caregiving that’s appropriate when our spouse is emotionally vulnerable with the raw craving that’s appropriate when our spouse wants to be ravished.

In short, whereas the happy life is characterized by ease and pleasure, the meaningful life is characterized by generosity, deep engagement with difficult pursuits, and a coherent sense of how the self develops across time.

Relative to marriages in earlier eras, marriages today require much greater dedication and nurturance, a change that has placed an ever-larger proportion of marriages at risk of stagnation and dissolution. But spouses who invest the requisite time and energy in the relationship can achieve a level of conjugal fulfillment that would have been out of