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The relationship described in the majority of the article is probably better described as 'friends with tax benefits.' It is to marriage what fine art is to reality: an interesting exploration of interpretative possibility. But it is not what people describe when they use the word 'marriage.'
Yeah, exactly. I'm always looking for more insights on how different people make marriage work because... shit is hard. But while the first two essays mentioned might be valuable, I don't see any real insight in the book the article is about. (And honestly, for all the claims of their intellectual superiority, I have trouble believing that anybody who would say that quote about 'feeling betrayed' has any idea how people work. People are complicated, not simple intellectual abstractions).
Shit is hard.

I started to write a comment and decided to move it here since I'm talking about the "feeling betrayed" quote as well. It seems the reviewer didn't understand the passage, but I felt like I have a direct experience that relates. I once gifted my wife with a coupon for a relaxing child-free night out by herself that resulted in a fight. It became clear that she was felt I wanted her to "go away". My wife is not particularly narcissistic and their are other issues at play, but I think it's easy for some people to get their identity and self-worth tied too closely to being married (Good Mother, Good Husband, Happily Married, etc.). When something (like having separate addresses) challenges these assumptions about the relationship, it's hard for people outside the relationship to understand (as indicated by the reviewer). When you are inside the relationship, you can lose yourself to these roles and when the other person doesn't fit them, it can feel like a devaluation of your self coming directly from the other person. That's how she felt in that moment and that's how I read the quote. Maybe we're too abstract or simple or intellectual. Evaluating our feelings in attempts to not repeat fights in the marriage has led to these types of abstractions as rules-of thumb or codes-of-conduct. Learned laws of living together.

I started reading the article, but it kept droning on and on. Eventually I found myself staring blankly at the page, nodding every once in a while to give the impression that I was paying attention.
I see what you did there
This is a book review of "Marriage as a Fine Art". It just doesn't get to mentioning the book until about halfway down.
There is a killer quote within: incorrigible intellectuals, constitutionally incapable of a simple anything, much less a straightforward answer to a straightforward question.

It's not that I am a total utilitarian, but I have long been suspicious of intellectuals who value intellectualism for its own sake. Just what are you planning to do with all that intellect and critical faculty you have spent so long refining, pray?

Absolutely nothing to do with marriage, of course, but otherwise the article would have had precisely zero value for me.