APW Book Club Questions: Dan Savage’s The Commitment

Ladies! And a few gentleman!

It’s that time. It’s first ever APW book-club meetup time, in 32 cities around the world, tomorrow (crazy, right?) So, with your help, I’ve compiled a list of starter questions for discussing Dan Savage’s The Commitment. Use them as ice breakers, don’t use them at all, use them for the whole party, use the book as a coaster and just drink. Do what you will. But I’m exceedingly excited to think about all the funny and smart women that you’ve always been told don’t exist, meeting up ALL OVER THE WORLD, discussing marriage equality tomorrow. Efffff. Awesome.

A few notes on the meetup. I’d love if you sent me run downs of how things went, but please put “APW Book-club meetup your city” in the title, and please try to send just one(ish) email per city (I’m just one person, after all!) If you take pictures, upload them to the brand new APW flickr group, with a note as to what city the picture was taken in. I will write up the meet-ups and start an online discussion of the book next week.

So, blah-blah-blah. Now, on to what you really want. The book club questions (linked to topical posts, for cross-reference and research purposes, of course). It will be just like your best seminar class in college, but with a lot more wine. I hope. What can I say? I’m ambitious.

  1. Savage puts out a bunch of different arguments for and against getting married. Which did you identify with most? Was this something that factored into your decision to get married?
  2. If you could approach marriage with a blank slate, ie, taking even monogamy and till-death-do-us-part out of the picture, what definition would you create? Why?
  3. Savage addresses fidelity/monogamy, and the need for couples to be up front with each other about it. Is a marriage defined by monogamy? Should it be?
  4. The book posits that successful marriages that sometimes have expiration dates. Do you agree? Why or why not?
  5. What does the use of the terms husband and/or wife indicate? Is it good? Bad? Does it matter?
  6. In the book, Savage grapples with how modern US society’s definition of marriage (gender prescriptive, restrictive, done by straight people) influences his desire, or rather his lack of desire, to be married. How does your personal view of marriage relate to what you see as society’s view of marriage? How does this affect the choices you make about your partnership?
  7. To what extent does the way that your government constructs marriage make you think differently about getting married and being married? (Including but by no means limited to the issue of gay marriage.)
  8. If the book came with an *exactly!* button, which passage would you choose?
  9. Would you kill your partner if they insisted you take a cross country road trip with a small child or a dog?

Oh, and have f*cking FUN!

Meg

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