The people you love most sometimes marry people you hate.

Coping with this all-to-common fact forms the crux of “How to Survive Your Adult Relationship with Your Family,” a one-woman show by Polly Frost, a professional humorist from New York City.

“It’s a funny and touching look at the ways our relationship with family changes as we grow into adults,” she said. “It covers the good, the bad and everything in between.”

Dealing with family as a child is one thing, Frost said, but as one grows into an adult, the relationships don’t get any easier.

Aside from survival tips, the show will humorously demonstrate “how not to become the designated ‘Cinderella’ of your family,” Frost said.

Even after slaving to fix all of her family’s problems, “I’m not so sure Cinderella’s life was much better with Prince Charming,” Frost said.

The autobiographical show uses humor to explore how a person can stay creative and positive when coping with a death in the family, a divorce or the introduction through marriage of “toxic in-laws.”

Frost performs the show at Studio Live at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, Sept. 21.

This will mark her third performance of the show on the road, after stagings in Louisville, Ky., and Santa Barbara, Calif. Audiences go back and forth from laughing to crying to laughing again, she said.

Frost said the show is very relatable as she’s gotten great feedback from both her liberal audiences in New York and her conservative audience in Santa Barbara.

Frost has been a professional humorist in New York City for 25 years. Her humorous short stories are frequently published in The New Yorker and two are included in The New Yorker’s “best of” anthologies — “Fierce Pajamas” in 2002 and “Disquiet, Please!” in 2010.

After the publication of her 2010 humor collection, “With One Eye Open,” columnist E. Jean Carroll, of Elle magazine wrote “[Frost] is the Edith Wharton of her generation.”

Frost’s humor has also been published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Barnes & Noble Review and Narrative and in anthologies ranging from erotica and horror to the supernatural.

While most of her humor is on the page, Frost has also been writing plays, which she regularly stages at the Cornelia Street Café, the Greenwich Village venue that gave birth to Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues.”

Frost and her husband, Ray Sawhill, also collaborate on humor. They most recently wrote a one-act comedy, “The Last Artist in New York City,” which was included in the anthology “The Best American Short Plays 2008-2009.”

Frost’s written work tends to be satirical, often focusing on our use of technology and the Internet while her live performances employ autobiographical humor.

“I’m not a stand-up comedian, I’m a sit-down humorist,” Frost said, so her stage performances aim for more sincere, deeper humor instead of simple jokes.

She said she’s looking forward to the Studio Live show in Sedona. In addition to having family in the area, her 1991 story “Off Ramp” is set in Sedona.

Frost said that as the world becomes more interconnected but more impersonal through technological advancements, face-to-face communication and live stage shows become more important.

“I want to have it be live. I think that we really need this more than ever,” she said. “I want to do this show live in front of audiences all over the country.”

She said part of that can also be felt in the book industry. As an author, Frost said she also values how small, independent book stores endured the rise of the mega-bookstores that seemed to put small mom-and-pop bookstores out of business.

But as those mega-stores have recently faced collapse and bankruptcy, the small, personalized stores that survived are worth supporting more than ever.

To support one local bookstore, at 1 p.m., on Thursday, Sept. 22, the day after her performance, Frost will host a book signing at The Worm Books & Music in the Village of Oak Creek.

Frost said she hopes that people walk away with the feeling that someone is talking to them, and see the changes in one’s life and family and find a way to laugh at them.

“That’s really important to me — to connect,” she said.

Tickets to the performance are $15 in advance and $17 the day of the show online at www.StudioLiveSedona.com and at Golden Word Books & Music in Sedona, 282-2688.

Studio Live, home of the Sedona Performers Guild, is located at 215 Coffeepot Drive. For more information, call 282-0549.