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Vow: A Memoir of Marriage (and Other Affairs)
by Wendy Plump

Published: 2013-02-12
Hardcover : 272 pages
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There are so many ways to find out. From a cell phone. From a bank statement. From some weird supermarket encounter. One morning in early January 2005, Wendy Plump’s friend came to tell her that her husband was having an affair. It was not a shock. Actually, it explained a lot. But what ...
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Introduction

There are so many ways to find out. From a cell phone. From a bank statement. From some weird supermarket encounter. One morning in early January 2005, Wendy Plump’s friend came to tell her that her husband was having an affair. It was not a shock. Actually, it explained a lot. But what Wendy was not prepared for was the revelation that her husband also had another child, living within a mile of their family home.Monogamy is one of the most important of the many vows we make in our marriages. Yet it is a rare spouse who does not face some level of temptation in their married life. The discovery of her husband’s affair followed betrayals of Wendy’s own, earlier in the marriage. The revelations of those infidelities had tested their relationship, but for Wendy, it was commitment—the sticking with it—that mattered most, and when her sons were born, she knew family had to come first. But with another woman and another family in the picture, she lost all sense of certainty.In Vow, Wendy Plump boldly walks one relationship’s fault lines, exploring infidelity from the perspective of both betrayer and betrayed. Moving fluidly from the intimate to the near-universal, she considers the patterns of adultery, the ebb and flow of passion, the undeniable allure of the illicit, the lovers and the lies. Frank, intelligent and important, Vow will forever alter your understanding of fidelity, and the meaning of the promises we make to those we love.

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Excerpt

 FINDING OUT; an excerpt from VOW by Wendy Plump
From a friend. From the cell phone. From a neighbor. From e-mails left on the computer. From hotel receipts. From a homemade sex video tragically left out in the open. From the bank account. From the dog sitter. From the nanny. Especially if it is the nanny. From the spouse. From the lover. From an offhand comment on the playground. From the monthly expenses that don’t jive with anything you did or received or gave. From the cashier at the lumber yard. From some weird supermarket encounter. From your mother, whose antennae has been tuned to this frequency much longer than you realize. From the accumulation of doubt. From walking in on them in the office. From walking in on them in the bedroom. From walking in on them. ... view entire excerpt...

Discussion Questions

 1. “There are no politics to infidelity. It’s not genetic. It’s not gender-specific. It’s not even predictable.” (69) Do you agree with Wendy that infidelity is unpredictable, or might there be ways to trace the paths of betrayal in marriages? Explain your answer.

2. Consider the early days of Bill and Wendy’s relationship, when they met and fell in love in college. Were there any early warning signs of their future lies and betrayals? Do Wendy’s memories of their early romance seem tainted by their divorce, or is she clear-eyed about her and Bill’s past?

3. Compare Wendy’s first two affairs, with Tommy and Steven. What did Wendy learn from each of these brief relationships? Why did Steven have a longer-lasting impact on her life than Tommy did?

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