A Little Bit Married: How to Know When It's Time to Walk Down the Aisle or Out the Door »

Hannah Seligson is a journalist and author of New Girl on the Job, featured in USA Today, Glamour, and the New York Times. A graduate of Brown University, she lives in New York.

Quarterlife Crisis meets Why Men Marry Bitches: A guide to successfully navigating the long-term relationship years, for any woman wondering, “So...where’s the ring?”

Publishers Weekly

Starred Review.

Seligson's tidy handbook takes a clarifying look at the confusing and often frustrating world of long-term relationships, those open-ended multi-year affairs that could be described as "a little bit" like marriage. Putting extensive research into practical, everyday language, Seligson starts by defining the phenomenon with both broad social context and acute symptoms ("Does he value bromance more than romance?"), developing snappy common-sense lessons ("Thou shalt not move in together to save money"). Practical advice for making decisions and carrying through follows; an especially honest and illuminating chapter on "The Female Proposal" focuses on the reasons for wanting to get married, asking readers to "propose to yourself" first. Seligson's breezy style nearly obscures her intense original research, including 120 interviews with relationship vets and input from 30 professionals (an appendix contains brief profiles of all 150). Seligson even includes research into the market for her book: according to the U.S. Census Bureau, one out of 10 unmarried couples live together-that's 10.4 million people, all of whom (and not just women) could benefit from this clear-headed approach to making the big decision: marry or move on.
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Introduction 1

1 First Comes Love, Then Comes A Little Bit Married: Why the Long-Relationship Has Become the New Romantic Rite of Passage 9

2 Dating Peter Pan: You're Ready to Register at Pottery Barn and He's Playing Grand Theft Auto 31

3 Career Compromises and Christmas Trees: Should You Be Acting Married When You Aren't? 51

4 Playing House: The Cohabitation Commandments 71

5 Are We There Yet?: The Female Proposal 99

6 I Do. Or Do I?: Handling Doubts 123

7 Walking Out the Door: How to Go from A Little Bit Married to Very Broken Up 153

8 Walking Down the Aisle: Lessons from Matrimony 175

Meet The Interviewed 193

Acknowledgments 205

Notes 207

Index 217