Have you ever picked up a book and from the moment you began reading, you just knew you were going to appreciate every last second of it? That was my experience with Karen Propp’s and Jean Trounstine’s Why I’m Still Married.

Why I’m Still Married is a compilation of essays written by women as stylistically and experientially diverse as Julia Alvarez, Erica Jong, and Marge Piercy. It opens with a Grace Paley poem I found so moving that I’m going to frame a copy and give it to my husband on our next anniversary. As a collection, the book is a rich anthology of, as the authors say in the Introduction, “the real marriages that survive, despite obstacles and struggles.”

The individual women’s stories are funny, intimate, raw and honest. They talk about the difficult confrontations, the frustrations of conflict, the joy of their love, and the sometimes-hard relationship work that brings them closer to the person they have chosen. It’s the kind of book I’ll pick up and read again—and again, since there will always be new lessons or reminders I wasn’t ready to see in the last read.