What's Brewing for 2024 & Beyond
Please help me find young adults to interview for my new book project
Hiiiii. Happy 2024, everyone. Oh, it’s almost February, you say? When you’re me, there’s hardly a discernible time difference between a few days and a few weeks. If you know, you know.
Writing has been challenging me since completing and publishing my first book This is How Your Marriage Ends about two years ago. I’m not proud of it. So, I’ve been hiding under a rock for a bit and am hopefully about to crawl out now.
My aim is to tell you about some of the fun things I’m working on for 2024 (and to ask some of you for help with my new book project), but first, let’s briefly revisit an idea that is critical to your most important relationships—romantic or otherwise.
The idea of “knowing” someone.
What Our Behavior Signals to the People We Live With
It’s the subject matter of David Brooks’ newest book How to Know a Person, which I’m currently reading, and it’s the idea that perfectly summarizes what is missing in all of the dating relationships and marriages currently on their downward trajectory toward breakup or divorce.
After all, I thought I “knew” my wife. I knew all sorts of things about her. Her name, when and where she was born. I knew her parents and brother and extended family and her friends from high school, college, and work. I was comfortable around her. As comfortable with her as I’ve ever been with anyone. All of that added up to the sensation that I “knew” her. But, in hindsight, I think the more precise idea is that I was familiar with her.
If you feel consistently frustrated and confused by your partner’s expressions of discontent in your relationship, then I think this “knowing your partner” idea is what you should focus on most intensely to regain balance and connection between the two of you.
Everything we say and do in our daily lives registers in one of three ways with the people around us—positively, neutrally, or negatively. Sometimes we’re conscious and deliberate about how we’re affecting others. Often, we’re not. We’re so busy doing whatever we’re doing that we fail to notice how someone else is experiencing or receiving what we’re doing or saying.
But please consider this: Every time we do something which registers negatively with our romantic partner (or anyone close to us), it loudly and clearly signals to them one of two ideas:
They know me really well. So well, that they’re fully aware that what they’ve just said or done resulted in me feeling [insert shitty emotional experience here—angry, sad, afraid, embarrassed, stressed, anxious, etc.] Even though they know this about me, they still chose to do or say it anyway because they do what they want, and their thoughts and feelings matter much more to them than mine. Whenever what I feel comes into conflict with what they feel, they pretty much always choose themselves over me. And that hurts a lot.
Despite being together for many years, and seemingly countless conversations about things like this, my partner continues to do or say things that hurt me. They claim it’s an accident. That they didn’t realize I felt the way that I do about it. But that’s so hard to understand after so many years together. No matter what they say, the proof is in the pudding—if they’re not hurting me on purpose, then I guess they’re hurting me by accident, which can only mean that they really don’t know me at all.
New Year, New Projects
I’m working on a new book. More on that in a second.
I expect to launch some relationship coursework in 2024 as an alternative to working with me one-on-one. I’m really looking forward to seeing what that can be.
And probably the most fun thing, but also totally out of my hands at this point, is that a television writer and creator has adapted This is How Your Marriage Ends for television as a drama/comedy. Two episodes have been written so far, and I wish I could share them with you because they’re smart and funny. We have NOT been picked up by a studio for production, and we may never be. But I’m keeping my fingers crossed. The writer/show creator has a series on both HBO and Showtime, so maybe our agents can make some magic happen. Time will tell.
A character named David, loosely based on me, and living in Brooklyn, New York with a physical office where he meets with clients (unlike me who lives near Cleveland, Ohio and works with people remotely via video meetings) is dealing with a divorce, two kids, an ex-wife who is settling into a new relationship, his own social life, and doing his best to help his clients navigate theirs.
It manages to deal with meaningful relationship issues with heart while still delivering laugh-out-loud hijinks and tomfoolery. I really hope I get to share some good news with you about that someday.
But in the Meantime, Please Help Me With the New Book
We don’t have a title. Just an outline, and most of an introductory chapter written.
The book is going to be shorter than This is How Your Marriage Ends and will be designed specifically for younger people (mostly guys, probably) who are about to get married, or are in the early stages of their long-term partnerships.
Something I didn’t do for the last book that I would like to do for this one is interview people as I used to do during my newspaper reporting days.
I am looking for young people—male or female—roughly 18-25. (And I’m also looking for marriage counselors and therapists who work with young people, so please reach out if you’re interested.)
I’m about to turn 45 in March, and I’m not afraid to tell you I know approximately zero people in the 18-25 age demographic.
If you are a parent, grandparent, neighbor, coach, friend, teacher, etc. to someone in the 18-25 age range who might be interested in being interviewed for this book (and trust me to protect their privacy), I would be so grateful if you could help put them in contact with me.
My email address is mf@matthewfray.com.
…
I’m sorry that I’ve been hiding, because I miss writing and I miss you guys. Maybe we’re back now. I promise to try.
Cheers, everyone.
Matthew Fray is the author of “This is How Your Marriage Ends: A Hopeful Approach to Saving Relationships”, a relationship coach, and formerly the blogger at Must Be This Tall To Ride.