Cover of I Want My Life With You

I Want My Life With You

Scenes from a marriage
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I Want My Life With You

By: Clover Stroud
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Summary

What makes a good marriage?

Clover has been married to Pete for fifteen years. Together they have brought up five children. But for much of that time they have been apart. Now walking into mid-life, for Clover their marriage feels fragile. Many of their peers are divorcing, or opening their marriage, or coming out as polyamorous. When Pete’s work keeps him in Washington DC, Clover packs up her home and children to cross the Atlantic and join him. It is an active commitment to their relationship.

The move, and the apparent gloss of the Washington life surrounding her, forces Clover to reflect on her marriage. So often, what appears from the outside of a relationship is entirely different to what’s going on inside. What are the sacrifices a couple make? Can you grow as an individual, yet remain part of a committed partnership? What do we lose of ourselves?

As she navigates a new country, that is itself in a state of flux and change, Clover explores the emotional landscape of both her marriage, and mid-life, searching for what she finds she needs, and in the end, what she wants.

© Clover Stroud 2027 (P) Penguin Audio 2027
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Reviews

Clover has been writing fearlessly and honestly about what life really feels like for decades, and we are so lucky she has turned her attention to relationships. The result is a book that is unafraid to show us the realities of a marriage. The peace and the peril. The strength and the fragility. The sweetness and the resentment. Clover understands that love is a process of moving towards and away from each other, finding each other again, and finding yourself again in that process too. It's thrilling to read a writer who is brave enough to explore the adventure of commitment, without shying away from the risks of trying to combine your life with another's. Read this book to understand how to keep finding freedom in a shared life. (Natasha Lunn)
Clover Stroud writes about the beautiful, confounding, complicated subject of marriage with astonishing tenderness, characteristic ferocity, and granular intimacy. She understands that a marriage is never just one love story, but a thousand daily adventures and tales, unfolding inside and alongside each other — stories of longing, disappointment, desire, forgiveness, loneliness, loyalty, and the wild daily miracle of choosing to stay. What moves me most about Clover’s writing is her refusal to look away from the complicated truth of being human. She knows that love is not the opposite of difficulty, but something that can live right in the middle of it. Here is a book of real emotional courage, which is what I have come to expect from Clover Stroud. She is an author who understands better than almost anybody writing today that the human heart is both an unfathomable wilderness and our only true home. (Elizabeth Gilbert)
I loved this. It’s like Clover takes us to a Washington DC crossroads and looks up and down at all the avenues that love, marriage and relationships have to offer. Every midlife woman will recognise herself in this book, whether the woman she is now, or a ghost from the past. It’s a good reminder that the younger version of us is still a friend, cheering us on in the decisions we made. Beautifully written, of course — Clover’s best yet. (Anna Wharton)
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