The Anatomy of Marriage: The 10 Most Dysfunctional Married Couples in Literature
Nel Wright and Jude Greene
Sula, Toni Morrison
“Every now and then she looked around for tangible evidence of his having ever been there. Where were the butterflies? the blueberries? the whistling reed? She could find nothing, for he had left nothing but his stunning absence.”
Yeah, a marriage is pretty dysfunctional when it ends because your husband sleeps with and falls in love with your best friend before disappearing entirely. But also, that same marriage would be just as dysfunctional if your husband stayed and you remained married to him even though you were the one in love with your best friend. You know? Maybe you don’t know. In which case, read Sula and be glad to live in a time when heterosexuality isn’t a mandate and people are free to love who they love. For, like, the most part.
Walter and Marit Such
“Last Night,” James Salter
“Whatever holds people together was gone. She told him she could not help it. That was just the way it was.”
I… would feel horrible if I gave away what exactly makes this couple dysfunctional. And I rarely feel horrible about anything. But this is a short story and so you should read it and feel lucky about your relationship’s circumstances and the general healthiness with which you interact with the one you love (or so I assume, but what do I know? nothing, really) Suffice it to say, there’s a pretty interesting morning after in this story.