Summary

“Who you marry is the most important decision you will ever make,” claims Brooks in Chapter 14, “The Maximum Marriage,” opening Part III (138) Even George Washington, whose life was historic by any measure, stated: “I have always considered marriage as the most interesting event of one’s life, the foundation of happiness or misery” (138) By “Maximum Marriage,” Brooks means total self-giving, where two become one in something of a “revolution” of joint surrender (139, 143). He argues against marriage as a contract or partnership of self-actualization and laments the assault on Maximal Marriage resulting from individualism, easy divorce and the less demanding “companionate” or truce marriage of mediocrity (141). “Go all in,” he advises, since “it’s dangerous to go in half-hearted,” and miss the ultimate moral education that marriage represents (146).

Maximal Marriage cannot happen without vulnerability, which occurs during “The (two) Stages of Intimacy,” the titles...