From the author of the international bestsellers Essays in Love, The Architecture of Happiness, and How Proust Can Change Your Life, comes a novel that explores with trademark warmth and wit the complex landscape of a modern relationship. Rabih and Kirsten meet, fall in love, get married. Society tells us this is the end of the story. In fact, it is only the beginning. Over the years this ordinary couple will miscommunicate and misunderstand each other, will worry about money, will have first a girl and then a boy. One of them will have an affair, one will think about it. Both will have doubts. This will be the real love story. Twenty-first century depictions of love and marriage are shaped by a set of Romantic myths and misconceptions. With philosophical insight and psychological acumen, Alain de Botton presents a realistic case study for marriage and examines what it might mean to love, to be loved -- and to stay in love.