Elizabeth Gilbert, the best-selling author of Eat, Pray, Love, examines questions of compatibility, infatuation, fidelity, family tradition, social expectations, and divorce risks in her new memoir, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage.

At the end of Eat, Pray, Love, Gilbert fell in love with Felipe, a Brazilian-born man of Australian citizenship who’d been living in Indonesia when they met. Resettling in America, the couple swore eternal fidelity to each other, but also swore to never, under any circumstances, get legally married. (Both were survivors of previous horrific divorces.) But providence intervened one day in the form of the U.S. government, which after unexpectedly detaining Felipe at the America border crossing, gave the couple a choice: they could either get married, or Felipe would never be allowed to enter the country.