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"You might know New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Weiner from her books, like Good in Bed or In Her Shoes. You might know her from her outspoken stance on the equal treatment of women in literature. Or you might know her from following along with her hilarious live-tweeting sessions during The Bachelor. Her upcoming book, All Fall Down, tells the story of Allison, a married mom in the suburbs who finds herself coping with prescription pills and struggling to admit she might be an addict. It&amp;#x27;s a dark, gritty topic, but it&amp;#x27;s explored with the author&amp;#x27;s signature sense of humor and heart. When I got to chat with Jennifer about dating, relationships, and her new book, I wasn&amp;#x27;t surprised to learn that like her characters, she&amp;#x27;s smart, engaging, and able to see the funny side of a not-so-happy situation. She cracked me up with the story of her worst date: &amp;quot;I met this really cute guy in a dog park, and he was like, &amp;#x27;Hey, do you wanna get dinner and see a movie Friday night?&amp;#x27; and I was like OMG! So all week, I&amp;#x27;m all pumped up. Halfway through dinner I said something about us being on a date and he gets this look of horror on his face and he said, &amp;#x27;Uh, you know this isn&amp;#x27;t like, a date date right? I&amp;#x27;m seeing someone.&amp;#x27; So I&amp;#x27;m like, &amp;#x27;Oh no, of course I knew that, silly!&amp;#x27; And then we went and saw Titanic, and it was three hours long and I wanted to die. I felt so stupid.&amp;quot; (Note: Fans of Good in Bed will note that Cannie has a similar experience in that book!) And her best date story, a fancy brunch with her boyfriend and two kids after running a 10-mile race, made me happy and hungry. But we got to what I really consider the heart of most of her characters&amp;#x27; stories when we discussed what it really means for women today to find their happy ending in a non-fairy-tale world. Here&amp;#x27;s what we talked about: A lot of your characters are women who&amp;amp;#8217;ve become, by choice or otherwise, typical housewives who&amp;amp;#8217;ve had kids and moved to the suburbs, and they find themselves pretty unhappy in that situation. We&amp;amp;#8217;ve been talking about unhappy housewives since The Feminine Mystique in 1963, so why do you think that&amp;amp;#8217;s still where so many women are ending up today? I think that for all of the choices that women have, for all of the options that we have, for all of the avenues that we can take to get to whatever our personal definition of success is, the world is still selling that picket fence and the house in the suburbs and the man in the bed with you and the 2.3 kids and the two-car garage. I think you could talk a lot about capitalism driving that engine, teaching us that we need to acquire these things to be adults. Who profits from that notion of happiness equals a big house in the burbs, the right car, the right clothes, the right school for your kids? Even very savvy consumers of the media have to watch very closely as to who is trying to sell you on a definition of happiness. You&amp;amp;#8217;re very vocal about the way women writers are treated in comparison to men. Do you think those attitudes about women as professionals affect how we conduct our romantic relationships? I do. I think for men, success is defined pretty specifically: being successful at your career and making a lot of money. And for women, I think that is less central and what matters more for women is looking the right way, being in a relationship. That&amp;amp;#8217;s how a lot of people gauge success for women: Are you married? Are you seeing anybody? And once you&amp;amp;#8217;re married, do you have kids? And then there&amp;amp;#8217;s a lot of keeping up with the Jones&amp;amp;#8217; stuff: What does your house look like, what kind of car do you drive? How does your hair look? Do you have a yoga butt, a thigh gap, a &amp;quot;bikini bridge&amp;quot;? For men, there&amp;amp;#8217;s a lot less pressure around things like looks. So, yeah, I do think there are persistent double standards and that they continue to drive our notion of happiness and happy endings. In the new book, Allison, to cope with her unhappiness, ends up struggling with addiction, which affects her relationship with her husband. What do you think it takes for a relationship to survive a major issue like that? Honesty is the most important thing, and I think that&amp;amp;#8217;s so central for any kind of happy relationship. People have to be honest about what they&amp;amp;#8217;re feeling, what&amp;amp;#8217;s worrying them, what&amp;amp;#8217;s making them happy and not so happy. I think for Allison, she doesn&amp;amp;#8217;t want to be in touch with those feelings. There&amp;amp;#8217;s a lot of painful stuff&amp;amp;#8212;feelings of inadequacy from her own childhood, feelings that her own parents didn&amp;amp;#8217;t really want her, feeling that she&amp;amp;#8217;s not good enough for her husband. Rather than figuring out how to handle those feelings in a healthy way or being honest with her husband, she&amp;amp;#8217;ll take a pill. A lot of women will do that&amp;amp;#8212;maybe it&amp;amp;#8217;s a pill, maybe it&amp;amp;#8217;s a glass of wine, maybe it&amp;amp;#8217;s another spinning class. There are lots of ways that we have, some of them healthier than others, for dealing with emotions that we don&amp;amp;#8217;t want to handle. Speaking of Allison&amp;amp;#8217;s insecurities, that&amp;amp;#8217;s a theme with a lot of your characters, women who don&amp;amp;#8217;t really believe they are deserving of love. But most of them do end up in loving relationships, so what do you think it takes to get there? Growing up. Getting older. Getting positive reinforcement other places. For me growing up, I wasn&amp;amp;#8217;t the prettiest girl or the skinniest girl, but I had teachers who were always giving me good feedback, saying you&amp;amp;#8217;re a good writer, you should keep doing it. Friendship is so important and so validating. I&amp;amp;#8217;ve had my best friend Susan for 20 years, and we know each other so well. That can be a really validating relationship, somebody who sees you, not the way you see yourself, because we&amp;amp;#8217;re so hard on ourselves. Women always have that voice in our heads, &amp;amp;#8220;You&amp;amp;#8217;re not good enough, you&amp;amp;#8217;re not thin enough, you don&amp;amp;#8217;t deserve this,&amp;amp;#8221; and it&amp;amp;#8217;s so important to have somebody else in your life that says, &amp;quot;No, you do deserve this.&amp;quot; Is it important to you to take your characters on a journey where they learn to feel good before they end up with a guy? Yeah. I always want there to be an element of escapism or fantasy, I always want there to be a happy ending or a glimpse of possibility. These characters deserve happy endings even if the world is telling them they don&amp;amp;#8217;t. You get a certain amount of grief from critics. I guess capital L Literature isn&amp;amp;#8217;t supposed to have Prince Charming showing up at the end. But that&amp;amp;#8217;s not always what happens in my books. It happens sometimes, but I want my female characters to be in a position to save themselves before the guy shows up&amp;amp;#133;When you know that you&amp;amp;#8217;re resilient to survive the worst things, whether it&amp;amp;#8217;s a parent&amp;amp;#8217;s emotional abandonment, or a spouse dying, or a child dying, all of the things that my characters have dealt with, if you know deep inside who you really are and you know your own strength and your own resilience, then that&amp;amp;#8217;s the happy ending. For more from Jennifer, you can read the first chapter of All Fall Down here, or pre-order it on Amazon. Are you a fan of Jennifer Weiner&amp;#x27;s books? What do you think is a happy ending for women today?"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/sex-love-life/blogs/smitten/2014/05/jennifer-weiner-all-falls-down>