I Don't

The author admits to a provocative ambition: she hopes this book will bring marriages to an end and keep others from ever starting. Her deeper aim is to push women past the limited ambitions handed down to them, and to encourage them to imagine lives in which they are not just a background figure in someone else's narrative.

She asks why the idealised picture of wedded contentment still holds such sway when so much evidence points to the heavy toll marriage can take on women. She also challenges the idea that feminism has largely succeeded, asking why so many women still measure their worth by whether a man chooses them.