Marriage Shock: The Transformation of Women into Wives

by Dalma Heyn

ith American women initiating two thirds of all divorces, the controversial, bestselling author of The Erotic Silence of the American Wife explores why the institution of marriage is failing them and what can be done. Marriage Shock will promote a vigorous debate over how husbands and wives can reinvent our most rigid institution so that both spouses will have marriages in which they can thrive.

Genres: Nonfiction, Feminism, Psychology, Self Help, Relationships, Sociology, Marriage

206 pages, Hardcover

First published March 25, 1997

About the author

Dalma Heyn is a New York Times bestselling author and psychotherapist who has worked for twenty-five years to help women develop the best possible intimate relationships, while still flourishing as individuals. Her books, which explore the loss of self that many women experience within marriage, have been lauded as revolutionary.

Reviews

[Joannah Keats · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a bit torn about this book, and I am going to attempt to explain why as concisely as possible.

I believe this book puts forth an idea, a concept that is incredibly interesting, complex, and worthy of exploration. However, the text itself barely skims the surface of the topic it is hoping to address. There is barely enough substance here to start a conversation with someone, as in "Did you read the part about such and such? What was your take on that?" It is all just so abstract and vague and felt repetitive from chapter to chapter.

I did not realize and would never have guessed that the author is a psychologist until I reached the bio at the end of the book, and I was a bit surprised. Although she is well-read in many of the modern feminist psychology texts and quotes several of them, she does not cite any actual RESEARCH or offer any suggestions on how to research this topic.

I do think her ideas are striking in many respects. In other words, I believe she "is on to something" but this text does not do the concept itself any justice. It reads like an essay written by an undergraduate for a 200-level Women's Literature course - interesting take/angle, but disorganized, wordy, and lacking structure, evidence, and a clearly argued thesis.

I am glad I read it, but it would have been better as a piece in Psychology Today or another magazine. I wanted much more from it because it was a BOOK.

[drowningmermaid · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I just adore that this is an issue that is being raised. And she does it well in such an engaging style and quotes from so many things that give me much more to read.

But I feel that my adoration does come with a caveat-- some of her historical research seems like flat bollocks. The idea that the feminine ideal comes from industrialization? And she cites the Wife of Bath as proof that the medieval women had more freedom to be persons-- the Wife of Bath who was deaf in one ear due to a beating she took from her husband and who then went into business for herself as a roving saleswoman? And who is in the same book as a story about a Cinderalla-type whose prince husband psychologically tortures her by repeatedly impregnating her and then having her children mock-murdered-- but who proved her feminine goodness by doting on this POS anyway?

I'm going on too long about this casual reference in there, but the whole idea that colonial and medieval women were more equal doesn't really sit well with my sense of history-- although I do think it an interesting idea that the advent of universal literacy lent the "male" sphere of influence more dominance.

This gets five stars from me because of the importance of talking about silencing that happens in marriage, and the valid questioning of the need for this institution, in its current forms. I would have liked an extra chapter on the effects of religiousity on marriage shock as well.

[Astrid · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this book thinking it might be interesting to skim through. Then I couldn't put it down. This book is not scientifically researched, but it's completely true. It may have saved my marriage and has definitely saved my sanity.

[Irini Gergianaki · Rating 1 out of 5]

Εντελώς ανιαρό, φλύαρο, χωρίς κάτι ουσιαστικό να ειπωθεί. Το σοκ του να χάνεις το χρόνο σου με ένα βιβλίο...

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A PROPOSAL FOR A MARRIAGE THAT ‘SATISFIES THE SOUL’

Dalma Heys wrote in the Introduction to this 1997 book, “Despite recent trends suggesting a shift in behavior---marriage at a later age, motherhood without marriage---over 90% of all American women will wed at least once before the age of 49. And while 65% of these marriages will end in divorce, the number of weddings will simply increase, since ¾ of all these parted partners… will remarry within four years. Widows will remarry again, too… There are, in other words, more women getting married more often than ever before…” (P. xi-xii)

She continues, “One of our favorite discussions revolves around the notion of marriage as a female-designed trap into which reluctant bachelors fall, as if this venerable institution were women’s natural habitat. Yet it could not be LESS natural for many women today. The average young woman … is comfortable with independence, autonomy, and multiple sexual relationships. She began having sex… between the … ages of 16 and 17… Yet we send this sexually experienced modern woman to the altar the way we sent her virginal, voteless, and homebound great grandmother, with … the vague, romantic prayer that if she had chosen Mr. Right right, she will… live happily ever after…

“This book questions that picture, along with the assumptions and myths that support it… It commands as profound an adjustment psychologically and emotionally as her earlier transition into puberty did and as motherhood will… While my conclusions are ultimately optimistic, I found that even to inquire about marriage, to ask whether as presently conceived it is a healthful environment for women… almost always elicits apprehension: ‘Does this mean… you’re going to tell people not to get married?’ No, I’m for marriage. I’m married myself, happily. But marriage… is an institution… Marriage doesn’t truly welcome women. If we ignore this, we will remain mystified when they … end up sinking.” (Pg. xii-xiii)

She adds, “When women enter marriage, ostensibly the place where they may most freely express and enjoy their sexuality, many instead … feel that they have lost touch with something in themselves… The culture’s cherished belief that marriage is where women flourish…is simply at odds with the reality of women’s distress, disorientation, and yes, depression in it---and their departure from it... [a.. s] we will see in these pages.” (Pg. xv)

She reports, “Depression rates among married women are triple that of their single (never married, divorced, widowed) female counterparts… married women suffer more nervous breakdowns… loneliness, unhappiness with their looks… more feelings of incompetence… and low self-esteem than single women… Married women are far more depressed than married men… In truth, it is men who are thriving in marriage… and who show signs of psychological and physical distress outside it.” (Pg. 11)

She admits, “I’m not a social scientist and this is not a ‘random’ sample or a scientific study. However, I believe that interviewing women over time… has allowed me to find out far more than I might have from any questionnaire… I hope these questions I raise in this book… will be studied further… If we really care to understand why up to 65% of all new marriages end, and most of them after only a few years, wouldn’t we spotlight … that whereas in 1970 most divorces were the man’s idea, today 60-75% of divorces are initiated by WOMEN?” (Pg. 18)

She recounts, “in the cartons of letters I keep sifting through, readers… said they became … less assertive, less sexual… and less honest with their partners, their families, their friends… At the moment of marriage---the happiest days of many of these women’s lives---they unwittingly gave up much of what they … enjoyed about themselves… in order to aspire to a more conventional, more conforming, more proper and modest… version of themselves called a ‘wife.’” (Pg. 26)

She asserts, “This pressure on our bride compelling her to ‘follow a whole new script’ about who she ‘should’ be… confuses her… the voice of what I call the Witness is so compelling… that soon she comes to doubt what she knew and felt… she begins to revise her voice to jibe with what the Witness tells her… she begins to hand over to it her sense of how to BE in marriage…. She awaits further instructions.” (Pg. 31-33) Later, she adds, “I’ve largely omitted men’s voices from this book; I want to ensure that the voice of the Witness does not lose its specific nature, and that we don’t become confused about … the true origins of our power struggle.” (Pg. 116)

She states, “In less than a century, a chaste home economist … had been constructed… and merchandised as the one standard for all classes of a perfect Wife. In reality, this Wife was needed to fill the economic and cultural hole that had not yet been dubbed the middle class… The modest Wife outshone her … shinier aristocratic predecessor with her luminous inner glow rather than her glittering outward gloss.” (Pg. 61-62)

She asks, “Why are women so fearful of interfering with a system that puts their emotional well-being at risk, that is inhospitable to their real selves, that historically has no room for the whole being, a system they so often want to leave?... Yet when it comes to marriage, we are looking out from inside the very framework that imprisons us, unable to clearly see the restrictiveness of the frame.” (Pg. 131-132)

She observes, “a paradox lies at the heart of our silence: that women are thought to be both insatiable AND not desiring. The world of women is at once a nunnery and a brothel.” (Pg. 171)

She suggests, “The terror is that if a wife does what she wishes … everything else---society, family, children---will go to hell; that only a wife’s self-sacrifice assures reliable family bonds… This is an untested fear; the fact is that the denial of this desire really is causing the chaos and abandonment… We’ve got it exactly backward: We listen to the Witness to stave off a disaster that listening to the Witness causes… Can you envision an institution in which a wife’s desires are acknowledged as real… and then openly discussed and acted upon? Can you imagine a time when seeing to wives’ pleasure… is crucial to the future of marriage? Come join the revolution. We’re about to overthrow the Wife.” (Pg. 175)

She concludes, “Women in the most satisfying relationships feel free to expand, want, explore, be themselves---and, not surprisingly, they are in the least conventional marriages. They have killed off the Wife and stifled the Witness… They have dared to take the framework all to pieces and to construct a morality for themselves… If you have the courage to do this, I promise you a marriage that satisfies the soul---and therefore joy.” (Pg. 197)

This book may appeal to (mostly) women, who want to look outside the 'traditional' bounds of marriage.

[Skylar · Rating 5 out of 5]

A life changing book. I read it the week after I got married. It blew my mind and changed my entire thought process about my new relationship. Unfortunately, it helped me realize the bad thought patterns and habits I was already falling into, and I became really disappointed in myself. It has been hard to change my "transformation," but at least I am conscious of the thought process and can hopefully overcome it in time.

This book is for smart, independent, motivated women. It essentially argues that upon marriage (even if the couple has already been living together for years), a wedding makes a switch go on in the modern woman's brain that makes her measure herself against the 19th century ideal "wife." It is so automatic that you don't even realize you've done it. And because society praises the self-sacrifice and backing down for the sake of "compromise," you actually feel *bad* when you act like the assertive, strong woman you used to be. The qualities that society subtly pressures you to aim for undermine your sense of self and is an unattainable ideal that you can never reach. Thus, guilt, lowered self-esteem, feeling like a different person, feeling like you have to make all the sacrifices, and other negative thought patterns.

[Victoria]

Don't agree with everything, and I don't think it applies to all women. But it's an important discussion; I'm glad I read it.

[Rori Rockman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Repetitive. She makes some good points, but overall, it's about 50 pages of real content stretched into 200 pages so it could be the size of a book

[Martha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Relationship expert Dalma Heyn asks not what is good for marriage but what is good for women in marriage—a question, she finds, that promises a much different answer and more fulfilling lives.

You complete me. Happily ever after. Many of us buy into the pinnacle of what the ultimate commitment is about – marriage. If we can experience culture shock when we travel or relocate, how about marriage shock?

I seem to have stumbled upon this book at the National Library – resorting to reading relationship books due to the dire lack of sex books. This is not a new book. Published in 1997, Marriage Shock questions what happens to the fun-loving, passionate single gal upon marriage. This woman transforms or is reduced to the status as a wife–a woman who unconsciously represses her own needs, wants, and vitality “for the sake of the marriage.” It explores the ways in which wives can overcome deeply ingrained social and personal expectations and flourish both as wives and as individuals.

I felt this book really belaboured the point. I was looking for take-aways – what should wives do to get over their shock upon marriage; what could these women do about finding themselves again; and how might their spouse support them? Not much. It’s all in the last chapter. So if you find yourself reacting like I was – nodding your head listlessly at the same points being phrased in different ways throughout the books, rolling your eyes and wondering when there will be any take-aways – you might like to just skip to the last chapter.

I am recommending this book because I actually can see the value in more women understanding what is happening to them upon marriage without even their conscious awareness. Too often, women remain silent, dismiss themselves for fear of rowing the boat and do herself or her relationship no favours at all.

On page 161 of this book, it says:

“It is lies and pretense about our erotic selves that go so deep we no longer notice. Pretense about our pleasure – its intensity, its rthymes, its idiosyncratic sources – is woven into our daily actions and expectations as wives like the threads in a patchword quilt. We lie to ourselves about it as well as to our husbands.

If we understood how dangerous it is to our psyches and our relationships to edit our words, our thoughts, our actions, would we begin telling the truth, piece by piece, thereby, in the words of Rich (Adrienne Rich), “opening the question of other ways of handling our fear”?

If we saw that the real danger in “sheltering” our husbands in the death of pleasure in our relationships with them, would we continue to respond to an ancient voice droning on about false dangers, threatening that we’ll lose it all if we dare to be real.”

So the take-aways by way of what one can do includes:

1) By admitting she (The Witness) exists – “by understanding why she was created, and what and whom she serves”

2) By realising she lives on in us;

3) By speaking the truth of our experience to our husbands and our friends;

4) By bringing our husbands into this experience of marriage shock so they too can watch what happens and how.

The book ends by advising that “women in the most satisfying relationships feel free to expand, want, explore, be themselves, pursue their own stories – and, not surprisingly, they are in the least conventional marriages.”

[Loral · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book. Have recommended this to many, they're so put off by title they have not read it.
They typically read books I recommend - such a shame!
Maybe a title change would work.
I do believe every woman should read this book before marriage or even after to understand more fully.
I read it when it first came out – can still get excited about the book now - 17 years later.
That being said, should have been a shorter book as there was too much redundancy.
Still, great.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very interesting topic but this book did not do it justice. She pointed out that a condition existed. The book lacked any serious discussion as to why, whence, or what might be done. Instead it was just example after example that the condition existed.

[Esther Kabamba · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book. Nothing I haven’t heard before. Marriage has and will always be more work for women but with the right person I’m sure it’s worth it.

[SaraJean · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book at a library book sale. I knew that I would have some trouble adjusting to married life and thought this book might be interesting. (Granted, I did have some trouble, but not in the way I anticipated and not in the way this book anticipated.)

This book would have been a good companion piece to Traveling with Pomegrantes by Sue Monk Kidd. Kidd, drawing on her years of Jungian therapy, relies heavily on archetypes, as does Marriage Shock. Heyn posits the idea of The Wife, an archetype that informs women that they must sacrifice their goals, dreams, happiness, and ideals for the support of the family. In most of Heyn's case studies, the husbands are not reinforcing this, nor would many of them even think it. It is the woman's internalized understanding of marital roles that is driving the feelings and even the inability to identify, much less articulate, these feelings.

Heyn identifies the cause of The Wife as stemming from the conduct books of the 17th and 18th centuries. She also links the concept of The Wife to Harlequin-style romance novels, but I would have liked her to do more work with that. Additionally, I perceived the book to kind of just stop. So much research is put into the historical understanding of The Wife and modern interpretations thereof that one would assume the natural next step to be what to do about it. Heyn offers little advice beyond, "be mindful." Clearly, that is very good advice, but more would have been my preference.

Even though the issues identified were not those that I had particularly experienced and I was disappointed by the ending, I did very much enjoy this book. I found it informative and thought-provoking and would recommend it to anyone interested in feminsim, gender studies, and marriage as an institution.

[Alia · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book made me angry and annoyed me. Her whole premise was the idea that women have an idealized image of a Wife ingrained in our heads, and that as soon as we get married we try to become this image, even though doing so usually means stifling our own voices and behaviors. She believes that this disconnect between who we really are and who we think we should be is what causes so many women to feel depressed in their marriages and why more women than men are the initiators of divorce. Okay, I will grant her that if I were to completely disregard my own acquired knowledge of relationships and start trying to fulfill some ideal of perfect Wifehood, I would probably be depressed, too, since ideals are rarely attainable. However, I feel that women, in general, are stronger and smarter than that. I believe that more women are capable of realizing that their own personalities are what made their relationships succeed to the point of marriage in the first place, that those personalities are what attracted their husbands to them, and to therefore not throw that all away for some imagined idea of what a wife is supposed to be. I don't believe women are so weak as to be swayed to completely different ways of behaving without doing anything to stop it or fight it. And yes, the author does give us a chapter at the end of the book on how we can fight the Wife and have strong, healthy, real marriages, but . . . I guess I feel like women now, 15 years after she did most of the research for this book, know how to do that already, and wouldn't let themselves be caught in that trap.

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book because I found it at the used book store for a $1 and it looked interesting. Now, I fully expected to hate it because...I mean, look at it, but much to my surprise, it was kind of awesome.

Now, the reason I didn't give it five stars was in part because the author didn't quite know how to articulate certain feelings so she resorted to somewhat uncomfortable metaphors. (The whole "Witness" thing is pretty creepy.) Which I mean, that's okay. I do that myself sometimes, but when you're writing a book, and not a journal entry, it's a little weird. Obviously the author isn't much of an expert (this book seriously lacks an academic feel), but she still makes a lot of good points and validates my feelings so I'm willing to over look it.

But this is one of those books that really had an impact on me. When I was done I was just like, "YES, EXACTLY." I often read books and forget what I thought of them within two weeks. I read this book over five years ago and I still remember a lot.

[Cyndie Courtney · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was hesitant to post to my update feed that I read this book. Ironically this book did a great job of explaining why.

There is something about becoming a "wife", something subtle that shifts that almost feels too slight to mention. How it manifests can depend on the person, for me it was partly that weird desire to suddenly start cooking more. In the anxiety and uncertainty of this new role, all of the sudden a third person enters our marriage - "the ideal wife" She brings with her all the unspoken expectation to be her.

This book helps highlight the smoke of the industrial revolution that this mysterious figure emerged from and how we call can understand her force in our lives.

It helps illustrate how in trying too hard to fit into the stereotyped roles in marriage, we can stop being the individuals who fell in love in the first place.

Resonated with my own experience and wanted to share it in case anyone else went through or is going through this adjustment that can feel so disorienting and isolating. Don't worry, you will find yourself and your marriage despite it.

[Genevieve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Main idea from this: don't let your voice be silenced when you marry - you'll lose yourself. Hmm. This was a message I needed to hear.
If you seek pleasure for yourself, everyone will be happy. Good message for everyone. Her writing style got in the way for me. In my opinion, too much talk, not enough meat.

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I only read part of this book. It was an interesting insight into the institution of marriage, but it wasn't interesting enough to hold my interest. I felt a lot of the stories didn't apply to me, and it made me feel depressed...thus, not finishing it.

[Bronwyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice to see a more realistic book written about marriage. Marriage is wonderful, but certainly is a shock to the system. It was a relief to see someone examine the issue!

[Monica · Rating 1 out of 5]

Negative spin on marriage and conformity. Felt like the main point was to convince women either not to marry or to never work on their marriage.

[Kristen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprisingly eye-opening. Incredibly intriguing.

[Ravenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

So far (chapter 5), this book has made its way onto my "Essentials of Feminist Literature" shelf. Very well done!

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting take on women and marriage, specifically the cultural expectations we have of the idealized "wife".

[Ingrid · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this right around the time of my own wedding, and it helped me start married life with realistic expectations.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe I would have liked this book more if I was married...

[Meldi Arkinstall · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thought-provoking read for anyone who is getting married, is married...or has been married!

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Marriage Shock: The Transformation of Women into Wives (Hardcover)
by Dalma Heyn