How to Stay Married
Kindle
$14.99
Available instantly
Audible Logo Audiobook
$0.00
with membership trial
Hardcover
$21.32
Paperback
$17.99
Audible Logo Your audiobook is waiting!
Enjoy a free trial on us
$0.00
  • Click above for unlimited listening to select audiobooks, Audible Originals, and podcasts.
  • One credit a month to pick any title from our entire premium selection — yours to keep (you'll use your first credit now).
  • You will get an email reminder before your trial ends.
  • $14.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel online anytime.
Learn more about membership
Sold and delivered by Audible, an Amazon company
List Price: $18.74
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible’s Conditions Of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice.
Sold and delivered by Audible, an Amazon company

How to Stay Married Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Harrison Scott Key (Author, Narrator), Lauren Key (Narrator), Simon & Schuster Audio (Publisher)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 881 ratings
Goodreads Choice Award nominee
See all formats and editions

From Harrison Scott Key, winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, How to Stay Married tells the hilarious, shocking, and spiritually profound story of one man’s journey through hell and back when infidelity threatens his marriage.

One gorgeous autumn day, Harrison discovers that his wife—the sweet, funny, loving mother of their three daughters, a woman “who’s spent just about every Sunday of her life in a church”—is having an affair with a family friend. This revelation propels the hysterical, heartbreaking action of How to Stay Married, casting our narrator onto “the factory floor of hell,” where his wife was now in love with a man who “wears cargo shorts, on purpose.” What will he do? Kick her out? Set fire to all her panties in the yard? Beat this man to death with a gardening implement? Ask God for help in winning her back?

Armed with little but a sense of humor and a hunger for the truth, Harrison embarks on a hellish journey into his past, seeking answers to the riddles of faith and forgiveness. Through an absurd series of escalating confessions and betrayals, Harrison reckons with his failure to love his wife in the ways she needed most, resolves to fight for his family, and in a climax almost too ridiculous to be believed, finally learns that love is no joke. How to Stay Married is a comic romp unlike any in contemporary literature, a wild Pilgrim’s Progress through the hellscape of marriage and the mysteries of mercy.

Previous page
  1. Listening Length
    8 hours and 43 minutes
  2. Author
    Harrison Scott Key
  3. Narrator
    Harrison Scott Key, see all
  4. Audible release date
    June 13, 2023
  5. Language
    English
  6. Publisher
    Simon & Schuster Audio
  7. ASIN
    B0BRYPW56B
  8. Version
    Unabridged
  9. Program Type
    Audiobook
  10. See all details
Next page

Read & Listen

Switch between reading the Kindle book & listening to the Audible audiobook with Whispersync for Voice.
Get the Audible audiobook for the reduced price of $12.99 after you buy the Kindle book.

Product details

Listening Length 8 hours and 43 minutes
Author Harrison Scott Key
Narrator Harrison Scott Key, Lauren Key
Whispersync for Voice Ready
Audible.com Release Date June 13, 2023
Publisher Simon & Schuster Audio
Program Type Audiobook
Version Unabridged
Language English
ASIN B0BRYPW56B
Best Sellers Rank #4,703 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals)
#4 in Religious Humor
#24 in Parenting & Families Humor
#102 in Comedy & Humor

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
881 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Mike in Kentucky
5.0 out of 5 stars Funny and meaningful
Reviewed in the United States on March 25, 2024
Verified Purchase
This is a great book. It was a story I can learn a lot from and written in a way that’s engaging and entertaining. An unusual combination and a nice change from dry lecturing type books.
Helpful
 Report
Mary Wallander
5.0 out of 5 stars A wild ride through a marriage
Reviewed in the United States on April 15, 2024
Verified Purchase
Outstanding chronicle of the author’s marriage before and after he discovers his wife’s infidelity. A riveting story spiced with lots of humor. I couldn’t put it down.
Helpful
 Report
Martha A.
4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, heartbreaking and funny
Reviewed in the United States on September 2, 2023
Verified Purchase
All at the same time. It was hard to make sense of it, a man describing the breakdown of a marriage that refused to be a marriage. He admits, it usually doesn’t work out the way it did for him, but with humor walks through the darkest years of his life.
3 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
S. D. Jones
5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best books that I've ever read
Reviewed in the United States on April 7, 2024
Verified Purchase
An exceptional story, I enjoyed it thoroughly. I highly recommend this book.
Helpful
 Report
Lucky One
3.0 out of 5 stars hard to rate
Reviewed in the United States on April 3, 2024
Verified Purchase
I’m unsure how to rate this one. Well written. Entertaining. And the author has no idea how controlling and abusive he is. It’s humor! It’s funny! Ha ha. Which is a poor excuse for what is repetitive, abusive behavior. It seems that the secret to staying married is to accept you deserve to be treated poorly.
Helpful
 Report
A. Gift For You
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, Entertaining, and Honest
Reviewed in the United States on February 26, 2024
Verified Purchase
This book is a fascinating read. Key’s pain is palpable, and by the end of the book, I was so impressed with his strength, both in fighting for his family but also in writing all of this down.
Helpful
 Report
modinegunch
5.0 out of 5 stars Funny and poignant
Reviewed in the United States on April 22, 2024
Verified Purchase
This is an incredible story of redemption! And so funny - which is a little odd, but true.
Helpful
 Report
T-Hoss
5.0 out of 5 stars So Good. I’m Almost Speechless.
Reviewed in the United States on June 17, 2023
Verified Purchase
I love this book. I’m going to read it twice. Beautifully written and raw, I imagine that it must be grueling to relive these moments on book tours and readings. Lauren’s chapter was especially important to my experience of the story. It would’ve felt too one-sided to just hear his voice. Knowing the premise of the book and hearing him speak on it earlier this year, I’ve been anxious about how it could be told in a way that honors his wife. That doesn’t throw her under the bus. Any time you might’ve started to think he was being a saint, he shows his dirty underwear. That we are all broken. Holding on fiercely. Fighting for survival under the same bus. Sometimes letting go but not giving up.

It was especially powerful to read the physical copy. Starting at halfway, I’m panicking as I see where the story is and how much book is left. That stayed true right until the end. Masterfully told and sequenced. I want to be that community for my friends. He is still the same character we came to appreciate in his other books, but there is depth and repulsion that leads to grace. Nothing is cheap or easily won. And it’s worth the fight.
18 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report

Top reviews from other countries

Leah Sieders
5.0 out of 5 stars What a read
Reviewed in Canada on April 24, 2024
Verified Purchase
Fabulously story, loved it.
Report
Julie Smith
5.0 out of 5 stars Unusual (in a very good way!)
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 9, 2024
Verified Purchase
Such an unusual book. Searingly honest. Gripping.
Report
Amy Fuller
5.0 out of 5 stars mandatory reading
Reviewed in Canada on March 29, 2024
Verified Purchase
Made me laugh, cry, and ignore my children as they watched who knows what videos on YouTube. Should be pressed into the hands of anyone approaching marriageable age.
Report
Jenna Smith
4.0 out of 5 stars The best book on an awful marriage I have ever read.
Reviewed in Canada on July 1, 2023
Verified Purchase
I loved every page. It was heartbreaking, troubling, sweet and hilarious.
So, here is my more more complicated read of this story: I CANNOT lend this book or recommend it to anyone who has ever lived through intimate-partner violence.
I do not know this author or his wife personally. I hope theirs is presently a healthy and life-giving partnership. But the story that is described in the book is one in which both partners hurt each other in unimaginable ways, and yes, it includes violence, emotional at the least.
Harrison Scott Key demonstrates mercy, fidelity and an amazing ability to put himself under the microscope when one would be tempted to simply throw all blame on the adulterous wife. His wife demonstrates incredible resilience and willingness for healing and honesty when it may have been more comfortable to just walk away. So in a way, theirs is a miracle. But it is not a handbook for marriage. It is not a translatable story. It is unique.
I have heard the author in an interview state that "divorce is silly." It is not silly. It can be necessary, life-save, soul-saving sometimes. So, did I love this story? Yes I did. I loved the lessons of mercy, I loved the humour, I loved that they were able to resurrect and give all together new life to that which needed to die.
Can I had this book out to anyone getting married? Maybe. With the words, "Talk about this, and think of ways to avoid your partnership EVER getting to F**ed up." Would I lend this book to anyone in a toxic relationship? No. I would not. Because it would be too easy to internalize his unrealistic, somewhat uncomprehensible obsession with staying married and while it may be the healthiest thing for him and his kids, it so often is not for people trapped in dangerous relationships.
2 people found this helpful
 Report
Leyton Peterson
5.0 out of 5 stars Very helpful
Reviewed in Canada on July 22, 2023
Verified Purchase
Top notch book, great insights, very funny
Report