Relationship Advice: Can Love Come Back from the Brink?

sex & relationships:  article 
In a way, his affair, the revelation of all his sex secrets, was the best thing that could have happened to her. When he left, those years of trying to be the good girl, to keep a low profile, to fit in—all that was gone. At last she could be her own person. She filed for divorce in November, and it was the most euphoric day of her life, better even than her wedding day. "I was free," she says. "I could feel the sunshine again." But then you have to wonder: If it was such a joy to be rid of the guy, why did she take him back? With the answer to that question comes a rare opportunity: to look inside a marriage that was bound for the rocks and see how it was saved.

At the beginning it was an opposites-attract kind of thing, says Gina, age 35. They met during their sophomore year of high school. Bryan was a clown, a kidder, a cutup. Picture a young Nicolas Cage, handsome in a dorky way, always yapping, full of wisecracks and noodley little movements.

"I was the shier kid," she says, "the quiet one sitting in the back of the classroom who people would cheat off of because they thought I was smart."

Of course, she was smart. She just wasn't loud about it. She sheltered herself behind a wall of propriety, and she could tell he found this provocative. He was always teasing her, hounding her, secure in the knowledge that, bound by that politeness, she wouldn't strike back. Eventually, though, her dry wit would snake through, and he liked that too.

Despite herself, she liked him as well. Sometimes you need a clown in your life, someone to make you laugh, to relieve you of the weight of your intelligence and bring your buried nature into the light. It was Bryan who challenged her to a race that day, through an undeveloped area on the outskirts of Plano, Texas. Even today the memory is bright. Hair churning in the wind, speedometer clocking 124. She even slowed down once to let him catch up. Then the turbo on her Chrysler kicked in, and she smoked him all over again.

Everyone dreams of the perfect match. The One. It's an idea as dangerous as it is appealing. Appealing because it suggests the possibility of a tidy solution to the staggeringly complex challenge of finding a worthy mate. Dangerous because it reduces us to static quantities, like a foot size, awaiting the perfect fit. You step into it and voila, your troubles are over. But weall know that relationships don't work like that. Not even shoes work like that.

Even with all their differences, after graduation it seemed natural for Gina and Bryan to go to the same college—him for business, her for English and journalism, both of which she loved. By junior year they were already discussing marriage. True, they were young, and research suggests that the younger women marry, the greater the likelihood of separation or divorce. But by 21 they'd already been dating for five years, and it was hard to imagine that another five would change anything.

She still has the cheesy video somewhere, shot by an Olive Garden employee hiding in the bushes. A waiter sets a Dr Pepper before her, and as Bryan descends to one knee, she notices the diamond ring casually hanging on the soda straw. Another video preserves highlights from the wedding, including their departure, wearing Mickey Mouse ears, bound for a Disney World honeymoon. Never guessing the pain that lay ahead.

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Last updated: January 28, 2011   Issue date: December 2010

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Relationship Advice: the Romance Paradox

sex & relationships:  article 
A dirty little secret is being kept by many smart, independent women: In relationships, they'd prefer not to wear the pants. In fact, they long for their men in love to kick it old-school by, say, opening the car door, picking up the dinner tab (at least in the early days of dating), and eventually, asking Dad's permission for their hand in marriage.

If you're cringing right now, you're not alone. Even the women who crave these ultratraditional displays feel a little squeamish about it. "Women work hard to be respected and taken seriously in so many areas of their lives, and some may feel as if they're betraying their 'strong female' identity by adopting old-fashioned romantic conventions in which the man is, in some ways, playing a dominant role," says Tara M. Emmers-Sommer, Ph.D., a professor of communication studies at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. So how does a modern girl reconcile these two disparate sides of herself? Read on.

Romantics at Heart
When your guy squashes a big, scary bug for you—or better, whisks you away for a secretly planned weekend—there's no shame in swooning just a little. "No matter how powerful and independent they are, women still want to be pursued, protected, and cared for by their partners," says psychologist Diana Kirschner, Ph.D., author of Love in 90 Days.

You can blame it, at least in part, on biology. "Like all other animals, humans evolved to ensure healthy offspring. Millions of years ago, women wanted to mate with strong, resourceful, stable partners who could help provide for and protect their children," says Helen Fisher, Ph.D., a professor of anthropology at Rutgers University in New Jersey and author of Why We Love. "And although it has been a long time since women have needed men to support them financially, the cues that indicate those same qualities are still innately attractive to women." In other words, when he plans a date or helps you with a problem, it's powerful because, on some deep and perhaps unconscious level, it shows his ability to take charge and his staying power in the relationship.

Plus, being wooed feels pretty damn great. It can boost your levels of feelgood dopamine—the neurotransmitter responsible for creating that romantic high—and the brain hormone oxytocin, which fosters feelings of attachment to a partner. Sweet gestures (bringing you a cup of coffee in bed, braving the cold to get the mail, driving you to the airport) can trigger that same lovey-dovey response, but a woman also tends to feel an increase in sexual desire when she perceives that her man is listening and taking care of her, says Kirschner.

Biology aside, we can't ignore societal expectations, even in 2010. Emmers-Sommer conducted a recent study of 442 men and women between the ages of 18 and 49, and found that men are still largely the initiators when it comes to asking for a date, and that both sexes expect the man to always pay. "It's social modeling: We're given these scripts about the male-female dynamic," she explains.

Some of these notions of old-fashioned romance have been drilled into our heads since, well, our first Disney flick. As we get older, we're fed even more (and often traditional) relationship advice from our parents, along with being inundated by messages in ads, chick flicks, and reality TV.

Think about it—the commercial where the man gives his wife a new diamond ring when they hit the five-year mark, the romcom in which the hero chases his true love through airport security and onto the plane, leaving his shoes and spare change behind. And on reality TV, people fall in love and propose after, oh, roughly five dates (which consist of helicopter rides and romps on tropical beaches). A study done by Robert H. Woods Jr., Ph.D., at Spring Arbor University, and Samuel Ebersole, Ph.D., at Colorado State University at Pueblo, found that 18-to 25-year-olds avidly watch The Bachelor and The Bachelorette—and many of them claim they watch this type of show to live vicariously through the characters.

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Last updated: October 12, 2010   Issue date: October 2010

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