2025 Living Now Awards Gold Medalist in Relationships/Marriage
My Marriage Sabbatical
A Memoir of Solo Travel and Lasting Love
Description
A vibrant, honest, and unique travel memoir for readers who think they’re too old to “eat, pray, love,” My Marriage Sabbatical captures marital therapist Leah Fisher’s journey to maintain her marriage without forfeiting her own independence.
She wants to travel the world; he wants to keep working. At sixty, Leah Fisher is ready to Love, Honor, and Negotiate. The result is a long-married couple’s decision to commence an unconventional experiment.
Fisher takes readers on two journeys: an intriguing global journey—her year of solo travel—and the relational journey she and her husband embark upon as they skillfully negotiate their different priorities and preferences. We accompany them through a series of reunions and poignant farewells as they stay connected and gradually grow comfortable being together and apart. After the marriage sabbatical is over, both spouses are surprised by the outcome of their daring experiment.
With gray divorce on the rise, Leah Fisher’s memoir demonstrates a creative way to fulfill individual needs without having to make the painful choice between forfeiting heartfelt dreams or leaving one’s marriage to achieve them. A riveting travel story that offers wise guidance on maintaining marital friendship, My Marriage Sabbatical is proof that couples can keep growing as individuals and partners all through their lives.
Reviews
“A marriage sabbatical! What a brilliant idea! With courage, goodwill, psychological know-how, and a golden, wide-open heart, psychotherapist Leah Fisher dared to propose, negotiate, and carry out a year off from her thirty-year marriage, and managed to enrich herself, her marriage, and the people she met in her travels. Readers will be captivated by this bold, original, audacious experiment, colorfully described with zest, a shrewd, observing eye, and breathtaking honesty.” —Judith Viorst, author of Necessary Losses and Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
“Leah Fisher tells a tale of two fascinating journeys. The first involves a negotiation with her husband that reshapes their marriage. The second journey includes charmingly described accounts of living in a series of Asian and Latin American cultures. Both parts of this unusual exploration are beautifully written. My Marriage Sabbatical has much to teach us about the challenging but rewarding opportunities for partners to follow their independent dreams within long-term marriages.” —Carolyn and Philip Cowan, directors of the Becoming a Family Project and authors of When Partners Become Parents
“Long a trusted source for the media on sustaining a successful marriage, Leah Fisher now brings us a kind of Eat, Pray, Love for the faithfully married set. This book is a feast of wisdom for anyone struggling to balance midlife self-expression with marital commitment, and it is essential reading for spouses considering a breakup as balm for a restless soul. Leah not only knows how to counsel couples on marriage—she demonstrates firsthand what it takes to sustain a vibrant, lifelong union.” —Sue Shellenbarger, former Work & Family columnist for The Wall Street Journal
