Stay Away from My Husband, I'll Stay Away from Yours

On my most recent waiting room adventure, I happened upon the Ladies Home Journal.  I flipped through the pages, killing the time and avoiding the dual annoyance of both The Situation’s & Larry the Cable Guy’s voices pouring out from the television bolted in the corner.  Normally I enjoy a bit of “LIVE! with Regis and Kelly” in the morning, but with these two on the program (yes, at the same time, if you can believe it) I opted for the least boring looking magazine I could find and settled in for an unknown amount of time while my grandmother had her ultrasound. 

To my delight, a pretty interesting article caught my eye.  Coincidences never cease to follow me, as its content bore extreme relevance to a recent conversation I’d had with a good girlfriend of mine.  If this was some higher power’s way of attempting to get me to see this particular topic from a different view point, it failed miserably.  I’m pretty open-minded, but I couldn’t help but believe that this author is full of baloney.  (Either that, or she buys her own bs she’s selling, in which case I’ve got no doubt that one day the error of her ways will make itself known.  It’d be interesting to follow her to see the outcome!)

I use the term “selling”, because she’s got a book.  Here it is:

The title of the magazine piece is “Why Every Married Woman Needs a Guy Best Friend” and it is written by a woman named Iris Krasnow.  It starts out like this: “I'll Just Say it: I believe every married woman needs a cute, sensitive, slightly flirtatious guy best friend. Discuss.”  Well, discuss we shall….  I’ll start.  I think this viewpoint seems like a dangerous recipe for marital disaster!

The author of this piece goes on to explain that we married gals must all have another man in our lives: one to flirt with and to feel mysterious with, because the mystery is of course gone for our husbands.  These men we’ve married and whom many of us have procreated with, obviously, could never still find us as fascinating and intriguing as they did Pre-Marriage.  After all, they see terribly unflattering sides of us, like a baby making its way out of our vaginas or the feces we’d forgotten to flush in our sleep deprived stupor after having taken care of said baby all night.  Both, we can all agree, are seriously unsexy things.  And even if some of our hubbies haven’t bared witness to either of the above mentioned scenarios, they undoubtedly know many other dreadful truths about us: that our legs aren’t naturally silky smooth, because (you guessed it) they’ve seen proof of the razor and some stray shavings left over in our shared shower once or twice….  And because they’ve smelled our morning breath, have seen us flip out, fall apart and watched as our breasts plummeted to depths that no one’s poor boobies ever should.  ERGO: The mystique is gone.  Never to be retrieved.  And we conceited females naturally need a man in our lives at all times who finds us to be wonderfully mysterious.  (Excuse me while I gag.)  Other men who believe we’re as smart, gorgeous, and wonderful as we pretend to be with our witty conversation, plastered on make-up, and squeezed into Spanx undergarments.  These “friendships” with other men, however, should remain strictly “passionate of mind and chaste of body”, says Ms Krasnow.  Because, she tells us, only an idiot would ruin this good thing they’ve got going on by complicating it with sex.  (Holding back sarcastic laughter.)  Oh how naïve a concept…………………

I’m not saying I didn’t, at all, understand her viewpoint.  I actually did.  In theory, it sounds pretty nice.  She points out that even though we love our spouses and “connect” in other ways than in just the bedroom, there are still some things that we do not connect on.  There are the moments where we desire to share excitement over something that our significant other will only half pay attention to, say, while the big game is on.  And we may want to talk topics and do things with our spouses that they just really don’t understand our enthusiasm about.  Of course this all makes sense.  No one is interested in every single thing that their partner is interested in.  And let’s face facts here, after being married for years married folks can have a tendency to tune one another out.  But I don’t believe her prescription to this problem is the right way to go about dealing with it.  I mean, seriously?  Enter: other straight male to pick up all of husband’s slack.  This hardly seems conducive to having a better marriage.

I’m not going to be completely unreasonable and try to crucify this woman for her opinion.  I get it that there’s different strokes for different folks.  But I can tell you right now that what works for her would not work for me.  And I think I’ve got a pretty solid argument as to why it would not. 

When my husband looks at me like I’ve got three heads, or worse he doesn’t look at me at all, I’ve got my girlfriends to turn to.  When all else fails and I feel like I’m talking to a brick wall, I’ve got facebook to vent to:  A “wall” that typically answers back.  I just think that by going to another (straight) man instead would be playing with fire here.  We’ve all seen the gay man taken up as the “hottest new accessory” in recent years.  Gals nowadays have a fab gay guy on their arms like it's this season's hottest new Prada bag, parading him around while introducing him as the "gay husband".  (See here why one gay male detests this trend.)  These men provide for the women who befriend them, the filling in of a void that Ms Krasnow speaks about.  They give compliments when the hubbies have long since stopped, “You look GORGE!”, “That outfit is FIERCE!”, “This new Louis Vuitton corset you’re wearing makes your tits look AMAZE!”  There’s no shortage of ego boosts here.  And they will accompany their lady pals on marathon Neiman Marcus shopping sprees, and to be fair and not stereotype too much, anywhere else they and this female friend like to go, doing things that they both similarly enjoy.  They’re the companion to things which these gals’ husbands would never want to be a part of in a million years, and discuss all the latest gossip that the husbands could not care less about. They’re essentially filling in all of the blanks left by the husbands, without the bitchiness or cattiness of that another female may posess.  But when you throw in two heterosexual people of opposing genders who find common interests, confide in one another, and do things like laugh over wine with each other (Please see article in which the author gushes over Derrin, her incredible next door neighbor who is a master chef and whom she describes as “curious and extroverted, a divorced man of 60 with a gorgeous smile.”) you are playing with fire, in my most humble opinion. 

She addresses the label “emotional affair” and argues that all relationships outside of our marriages could be labeled as such, whether between two women, two men, or a woman and man because they are all relationships we’ve sought out to “stimulate our whole beings”.  She completely rejects the notion that her relationships with straight males who are not her husband are emotional affairs.  But this is where she’s lost me.  I’ve got some great gal pals, and I do not disagree that they help me to be my best version of myself, but there’s no possibility of messy emotions coming into play for us.  See, even though I’ve got some beautiful friends, I don’t think in speaking about our friendship I’d have addressed how gorgeous their smiles are or anything else about their outward appearances the way she did when describing her male friend.  There’s also no physical attraction there at all, because simple biology dictates that our “doors don’t swing that way”.  Well, in most cases.  But even with my gal pals who are homosexual or bisexual, it would take for me to also be of the same sexual orientation for there to be any kind of “risk”.  And yes, I believe there is a certain risk involved when a woman chooses to have male friends like this author suggests having.  Take into consideration that many a man and woman have tried through the years to be just friends, and then one day those folks weren’t in the right mind or were not strong enough to resist the temptation that had built up between them.  I understand that while in these friendships those individuals may have completely intended to keep things platonic.  (“Intended to” being the key words.)  But why put yourself in the position of being around a person of the opposite sex whom you admire and that you get along fabulously with, when you are married?  We as adults know that emotions are messy, and life is messy, and we’ve already got minimal time with our spouses in between all of life’s other attention stealers.  Children, jobs, in-laws, finances can all interfere with our relationships with our spouses.  And sure, we all need someone to turn to when we’re stressed out or broken down, or going through a rough patch with our husbands.  I just happen to believe that our mothers, sisters, girlfriends, and therapists are better alternatives to charming men who listen to us, show compassion towards what we are feeling, and who are seemingly perfect in the ways our husbands have failed to be. Is it worth the possible repercussions? 

I want to be specific in my disagreement, here.  I am all for mixed gender friendships, but when you are in a monogamous marriage, these male/female friendships should be kept strictly as “couple friendships”.  This is to say that if I have a male friend, he’s a friend of my husband’s as well, and this friend and I don’t “kick it” alone.  We do not have lingering conversations, whether over a glass of wine or over a telephone.  We don’t have one on one outings where my hubs isn’t present.  And there’s no way in hell my hubby would be one of these “straight male friends” to another married woman.  Oh HAIL no! 

Here’s the part where you chime in…  I’m prepared to hear it all- how right I am, how you believe this lady who wrote the article must be on crack, how some homewreckin’ whore stole your man after claiming she was just his “friend”….  Or, how insecure I must be, that I’m close minded, that if I trust my husband then I’ve got nothing to worry about so I obviously must NOT trust him.  Whatever it is, I promise to respond.  I want to hear what others think about this theory.  Whether you agree or disagree, I still want to know what you’ve got to say about it.  Because, the idea that our husbands should be completely comfortable and confident with themselves, with us and with our marriages and happily welcome another heterosexual man into our lives to make up in the areas they’re lacking, is just mind boggling to me any way I twist it. 

All Because Two People Fell in Love

These words hang above a door in my kitchen, on a decorated wooden plaque.  A gift from my mother.  She’s given me so much, I can’t remember if it’s an anniversary present, or simply something she found during one of her shopping travels and thought that I would like.  It matches nicely with the colors of the room, and it fits perfectly- as though it were measured and made for the sole purpose of hanging in that space. 

Time passed, and I barely noticed it there anymore.  After all, it hangs above the door to the laundry room, a place I try regularly to avoid.  But one day I glanced up from my end of our long wooden dinner table.  The words glared back at me.  It was during a tough time in my marriage, and upon reading the sign in that moment I felt a sense of fakeness.  I’d suddenly wished I had never hung it up.  It read like a lie:  “This couple, this family, this home… all of it, because two people first fell madly in love.”  What a fraud I was.  That’s not how our story read at all.

We aren’t your typical romance story.  He didn’t pursue and woo me at first sight.  No long courtship ensued.  There was no head over heels feeling, or moment of knowing that he was “The One”.  I’d had the pursuing and the wooing.  I’d become engaged to it, and planned a wedding with it.  Then, I left it.  And that’s when I met my husband. 

Random chance put us side by side at a work meeting.  All of the details leading up to the morning of our meeting seemed the Universe’s attempt at keeping us apart.  I was sent to a location a long drive South, only to find out upon arrival that the training class had been moved last minute, to a location far North.  Somehow, this information never made its way to me- not through office email or my manager.  I waited around a bit, for word from my superiors as to whether I should attend this already in session training incredibly late, or head on back to the office and catch the next training happening a week later.  The decision was made to have me attend, beyond tardy.  Back into my silver coupe I hopped, tunes playing, for a two hour drive back the direction from which I’d just come.  It was a bright and beautiful September day….  I took my time on that long stretch of Route 1 North, and into the city of Wilmington.

The only seat left for me was directly next to him.  His dimples were sweet and the sparkle in his bright blue eyes was reminiscent of the brilliant blue fall sky I’d appreciated on my drive up that morning.  I took notice almost immediately.  His endearing chuckle and broad chest also grabbed my attention.  So too, did his gaughty yellow gold watch.  We’re both pretty outgoing, and having to spend hours in a training class over the course of several days together lead to conversation and laughter.  “Sense of humor, check.” But, he smoked, was a Dallas Cowboys football fan, and had an apparent tacky taste in accessories.  “Triple No-Check.” Throw in the fact that I was sort of seeing a rebound guy after my engagement ended with the good ole high school sweetheart, and wasn’t even looking…  Mere attraction wasn’t enough for us to make any moves on one another and I doubted I’d even see him again.  I still think back on this day sometimes and wonder how we ever ended up together.   How could I have possibly known that I’d just met my husband and future father of my children?....

More time passed.  We had another training course together, ironically at the location I’d initially gone to the last time.  I was surprised at myself that I was excited to see him there when I walked into the room.  And I was sorry that he was already seated with others next to him.  There came a point in that class where we were instructed to pair up and “role play” a situation.  A tall, lanky and tremendously dorky man in his late thirties eagerly jumped up and asked if I’d be his partner.  “Damn.”  This guy was pretty high up in the banking world, and worked for an office a good distance away from mine.  He somehow finagled his way into insisting I take his business card in case I ever had any ‘questions’ that he could be helpful in answering for me and I gave him mine.  (I never called.  He, on the other hand, did.  And left a cringe worthy voice mail after several failed attempts to reach me, as well as a few creepy emails.  I eventually had to tell him, very nicely, to lose my card.) 

After this class, we corresponded via company email a bit here and there.  Until before I knew it, it was every day.  At the end of our shifts, we’d find ourselves typing things like “talk to ya tomorrow.”  He was in another building, in another city, so there was no office “walk by’s” or anything like that optional.  I’d gone on a few dates here and there with a guy who worked in pharmaceuticals, and a couple first and last dates with two others.  Nothing at all serious and I still thought of him often.  Finally, one day I either invited him along to a local restaurant bar where I had plans with a girlfriend of mine, or he invited himself.  Either way, I can still recall with striking detail the moment he came strutting through the door.  Black bomber jacket.  “Is this 1988?”  Fashion fail and all, he looked cute as could be!  Those dimples, and those eyes immediately drew my gaze away from that leather disaster, and we spent the night talking, laughing and drinking Sicilian Kisses shots with my girlfriend and a group of her coworkers at a bustling college town bar.  My next email the following Monday, would be more than just friendly, as he complimented me on my appearance the other night.  I may not have been wearing a coat stolen from Tom Cruise in ‘Top Gun’ (sans the patches), but I certainly wasn’t looking my best.  I still remember having my hair in a bun, and I recall exactly what I’d been wearing: a blue and yellow sweater, blue jeans, and white sneakers.  Naïve me had no clue that this “restaurant” turned into a happening bar once the clock struck 9:00, and after I’d finished dinner with my friend and we made our way to the bar area, all around me I was surrounded by stiletto heels, miniskirts and halters tops.  (Regardless of the fact that it was a freezing cold January night.)  In any event, a few more emails exchanged, and I asked him outright if he was flirting with me.  His cheeky response gave me my answer.

We hung out as friends, but there was no denying our attraction to one another.  One night while dropping me off at my parent’s home, he gave me the quickest kiss on the lips.  It startled me, as we’d always remained strictly platonic, and my reaction seemed to offend him.  It was then that I realized we were fooling no one by pretending nothing was there, and I pulled him back in for a do-over.  From there we saw each other just about every single day.  I club hopped with this seasoned “bad boy”, more than I’d ever gone clubbing before.  In fact, he was the only reason I went.  When our dates didn’t consist of dancing and drinking, we watched movies, talked about our families, and I introduced him to mine even though I was hesitant to meet his.  Things progressed quickly, and I was the happiest I’d been in quite some time….  Long story short, we found out I was pregnant on April 27^th, 2006.  All of that “attraction” and bar hopping together had led us straight down the fast track to parenthood. 

That night we decided that as crazy as it seemed, we would be a family.  Looking back, we were strangers at best.  But we came from similar family backgrounds: our heritage, our values, our beliefs and our ideas on what we wanted for our family and for this baby were all aligned.  In a whirlwind of events we bought a house, married, and welcomed two baby boys within one year’s time.  Our first son was born in December, and his younger brother came in November of 2007. 

Writing this today, I realize that the sign that hangs in my kitchen could not be any truer of me and my family.  Against all odds, here we are.  We’d never have made it this far without love.  A strong, authentic, overwhelming, binding kind of love. 

Ours is a love not of tradition, or romance- but of dedication, and faith.  We took a leap of faith and placed all bets on one another because of our love for our unborn child and the goodness we saw in each other.  We continue to dedicate ourselves to one another and our children, because of a kind of love neither of us had ever known until we became “us”.  On our journey together, we struggled emotionally, and financially, but in the face of adversity we fought.  We fought for love.  We lost who we were and found who we were meant to be, because of love.  We continue to fight for this love we’ve created.  Because it’s a love worth fighting for.

So, no, our love is not the ideal kind that you envision for yourself or for your children, or one that the fairy tales depict.  We may have met as colleagues, married as virtual strangers, and fallen in love with one another along the way.  But it just so happens, that despite the way our love has come about, it’s the most brilliant kind of love I have ever experienced.  And I know with a strange certainty that we cherish each other in ways that we couldn’t possibly any other.  This love we’ve got has grown and has strengthened in ways I have not seen in any other relationship.  And it continues to grow.  Our marriage, our family, this house we’ve made into a home:  Indeed, it is all because two people fell in love…..



Here comes the.... Divorcee

I’m a twenty-something Caucasian chick from the suburbs.  And I’m a minority.  In several ways.  Presently I’m focusing on the fact that I’m a minority amongst my friends.  And not because of my race, or age, or gender, or because of where I reside.  But because I’m one half of a married couple who has somehow managed to STAY married.  Think about that for a minute.  This may be no big deal in today’s world if I were middle aged, perhaps.  But as I’ve already stated, I’m not.  And neither are my friends.   My coupled friends are around mine and my husband’s ages, and they are ending their marriages left and right.  “Till death, do us part” has overwhelmingly become, “Till I can’t take anymore of your bullshit, do we part”.  And even though we’ve all been hearing for quite some time now that approximately half of all marriages end in divorce, didn’t you always think these couples were at least making it a little longer than a few years?  This isn’t Hollywood here….. Ugh. It’s so saddening to see.  Especially because small children are involved.  And what I also find particularly bothersome is that it’s the woman in 99% of these marriages who were the ones done dirty, who have given up the most, and who yet still stand to lose the most.  Do I seem bitter?  Maybe a lil bit…



We women have a habit of leaving our jobs to raise the children and care for our husbands and homes.  We’re known to put off going back to school, so that our breadwinner husbands can work longer hours or go back to continue his education because he’s the one who will reap the financial benefit for the family and more quickly.  (Did ya hear?  Women still make approximately 70 cents for every dollar a man earns.  And here in my home state of Delaware that gap is even larger.)  Wives and mothers also often find that their friendships suffer because they’re too busy with the laundry, and the cooking, and changing diapers, and helping with homework, and playing chauffeur to the kids.  These wives give the biggest thing they could possibly give to their husbands and children:  Themselves.  And when things go sour, they’re left in the wreckage, struggling to deal emotionally, with the added financial burden weighing them down as well.  This is the norm among the couples in my social circle, anyway.  It reminds me of the great Feminist Gloria Steinem’s famous quote, “Most women are just one man away from welfare.”  I’m a Feminist.  Did I mention?  Well, I am.  At least, I consider myself one.  To a point.  (Everything in moderation, I like to say.)  Having stated this, I’d like to also mention I in no way feel that in order to be “pro woman” one needs to be “anti man”.  I’m just callin’ it like I see it here.  The ugly truth is that all but a few of the men in these broken up unions were unfaithful and dishonest.  Some repeatedly.  And the uncanny part of it, is that even after their indiscretions were found out, they still behaved smug and difficult to work with when it came to attempting to repair the marriage.  What gives!?



Recently, it’s been proposed in Mexico by a left wing political party to change the civil code in allowing temporary marriage licenses to be issued.  Two years would be the minimum “Marriage Contract”, a contract that would be renewable if the couple remained happily married.  These would incorporate provisions on how the married couple’s kids and property would be handled, as well, if they chose not to continue with the relationship.  This makes some sense if you take a moment to ponder how every other contract we enter into has an end date.  We can lease our vehicles, at which point the lease comes to an end and we can decide whether to buy or not.  This is also the case when we lease our houses, and we have terms on our mortgages.  What other contracts can you think of that you’ve signed, that binds you for life?

What about the old adage, “All good things must come to an end”?  Hmm?  Or ponder for a moment, if you will, the fact the you are a different You today than you were even just a few years ago.  And undoubtedly, so is your spouse.  The dreams you had for yourself, number of children you wished to have, life goals, and hobbies of interest, they may have very well changed also.  If you’re anything like me, they’ve changed and seemingly keep on a’changin’.  Say, hypothetically, that you and your partner had bonded over a shared love of country music, the same social group in college, and that you both fell for one another over a shared love of rock climbing.  Fast forward to married life now with two kids,  minimal free time, stretch marks and stretched bank accounts…  Not only are you both stressed to the max.  But!  You now can’t bear to hear the country music being played on the radio today, ya only see those old college buds’ faces through a social networking site now, and you are so tired all of the time that you couldn’t physically force your twice-the-size-it-used-to-be ass up a small hill let alone the side of a mountain, if you’d wanted to.  This scenario doesn’t seem so far fetched to me.  What happens when all of the “perfect” reasons you’d been “perfect” for one another have dissipated?  Aside from one spouse betraying the other- there’s a myriad of reasons that marriages don’t last.  These things may seem small, but they add up over time.  There are probably literally hundreds of factors that evolve us all on a continuing basis.  How can you possibly grow together in everything?

The idea of marriage proves to be different than “actual” marriage, with examples of this truth all around us.  In the media and in our own families and neighborhoods we see firsthand how quickly and how nasty the demise of a marriage can be.  The wedding is fantasized and romanticized.  Then shortly after we’re made aware of the dirty details of deception, abuse, addictions, and mistresses.  More folks are beginning to see the unrealistic expectations of “till death do us part” for what they are: Unrealistic.  And many are choosing cohabitation over marriage.  In the United States, rates of cohabitation among heterosexual couples have more than doubled since the 1990’s, (finds a recent study by the Pew Research Center).  June Carbone, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, stated in a New York Times piece that today females with college degrees are actually more likely to marry than those with just high school diplomas, the opposite of several decades ago.  (Think these “blue collared” ladies are trying to break the cycle of depending on a man?)

I could ramble on forever about this topic of marriage. Like, for instance, how marriage first came into play when societal changes began to evolve.  Ironic how marriage starts out with the man, and typically, ends with the man.  See, men didn’t give two hoots about monogamy and marriage until material possessions came into play.  Once males began to acquire personal physical possessions, they began to care about who their offspring were.  Before this time, women and men mothered and father multiple children by multiple sexual partners, not caring who the parents of each child were.  It just wasn’t a matter of importance.  And all shared a communal responsibility for supporting each other: “the tribe”.  But as we evolved (there’s that word again) as human beings, and structured society took over, the need to know who should rightfully get the father’s earthly belongings became an issue.  Bring the need for “order” into the picture, and you now have things like man created religions that favor marriage for their own purposes as well….

Believe it or not, I’m a happily married person.  It may sound like I’m advocating for divorce, or against marriage. But I recognize full well the advantages to marriage- the monogamy, emotional support, the benefits to the children, having that special someone to be there through thick and thin till the end, to share a lifetime with, and I know that the list can go on and on.  It’s just that I’m a realist.  My husband and I are up today, but could just as easily find ourselves down in our friends’ places tomorrow.  We’ve worked on our marriage, a lot.  But then, so have many of our friends.  There are just certain things that marriages can’t come back from…. Each union is unique and complicated beyond anyone’s wildest imaginations.  This is undoubtedly true.  I’m just so damn sick of these women being the glue that’s held their marriages together for however long it lasted, then getting the short end of the stick when their husbands allow for it to crash and burn.  It may take two to ‘tango’, but it only takes one to break the trust forever and destroy a marriage- leaving the lives of their children and of their once beloved wives in shambles... Their exes now faced with the struggle and uncertainty of how to move forward with their new lives, in the rubble that remains.......