Why You Should Date Someone You Admire, Not Just Someone You Love

What makes a relationship last? Love. Now for the harder question: What is love?

This is one of the most difficult questions one must come to answer. Because love is a subjective experience, it varies greatly between individuals.

It's a sort of alteration to one's reality — to how one perceives and interprets the world around him or her, as well as his or her relation to it.

It involves thoughts, beliefs and intense emotions. Love is what allows for a connection between two individuals to form.

As is so often the case, however, time is love's enemy. Or rather, it can be love's enemy.

At the same time, love can grow stronger and deeper each year, allowing the bond between two individuals to form something almost otherworldly.

So why is it that for some couples, the love manages to last — even grow — while other couples can't seem to make things work?

The obvious answer is the two individuals aren't the right matches for each other.

Maybe they were the wrong type. Maybe they simply met at the wrong time in their lives, while living incompatible realities.

But this doesn't really tell us much. All it states is that the relationship didn't work because it couldn't work.

Of course, different relationships fail for different reasons, but at the same time, those who succeed usually only succeed for one reason.

When it comes to love, there are a million ways to fail but only one way to succeed.

Your love must go past the shallow, past the purely emotional, to a state of mutual fascination and mutual respect — mutual admiration.
Admiration is often the missing ingredient.

When you admire an individual, you respect him or her intimately. Admiration is a very personal matter.

While you respect strangers, respect your elders, respect for the sake of respecting, admiring an individual is a much more personal matter.

Especially when that admiration comes paired with romantic love. I'd even go as far as to argue that without a mutual admiration, romantic love can never reach what some would call everlasting love, what the Ancient Greeks referred to as “agape.”

Without a mutual admiration for each other, you and your lover won't be capable of making it the distance because you will get tired of each other.

You will lose interest in time, and your mind will waver, eventually breaking the bond the two of you have created over the years.

Unfortunately, admiration alone isn't enough to keep the love alive indefinitely.

What it does do, however, is make it much easier for you to keep that flame burning.
When you admire someone, you never completely lose the need to impress him or her.

Just as those who love wish for that love to be reciprocated, those who admire wish to be admired in return.

This may not hold true when the relationship is a shallow one, when we're simply admiring from a distance, but when the relationship is an intimate one, we have a need for the people we are with to admire us as we admire them, see us as we see them and love us as we love them.

Those in love already have a level of admiration for each other, but how intense the admiration will vary.

Most relationships hold a shallow mutual admiration — sometimes a one-sided admiration.

If you can manage to admire and feel the need to solicit admiration from your partner — and do so successfully — you create a self-perpetuating cycle feeding into itself, allowing your love to flourish.
The reason you admire the person you love is all that really matters.

Admiration is great. It allows you to bond in a way you otherwise wouldn't have been able to do.

Yet it's not so much the admiration itself that makes all the difference but the reason behind it that allows for an amazing partnership.

People don't admire for the sake of admiring. Like love, admiration is not something you can fake.

You can't make yourself gaze in wonderment at how incredible this person is.

You can't make yourself feel proud of all that your partner has accomplished, be proud of his or her strength, beauty, intellect and wisdom.

You can't just decide the person you love is an incredible specimen because it's something you must feel.

Something you must feel in response to interacting and spending your life with this individual.

In a sense, this is something the person you're with must inspire in you. You can't choose to admire; you need to feel inspired to do so.

As we all know, it takes two to tango. There are countless factors at play, enough to fill several volumes.

If the relationship is right, feels right, then the majority of these factors line up into place.

When a relationship is doomed to fail, it's because admiration is an impossibility.

Either we aren't capable of admiring someone, he or she isn't capable of inspiring admiration in us or vice versa.

Sometimes there is nothing that can be done to make a relationship work. But sometimes there is.

How to Get Perfect Eyebrows

If you want perfect eyebrows, you have a few options: you can go to a salon and get them waxed or threaded, or you could can create the perfect shape yourself. First figure out what shape is best for your face, then decide how thick or thin to go and shape your brows using tweezers and an eyebrow pencil. With great eyebrows, you can be one step closer to that movie star look. Grab those tweezers!

Method 1 of 3: Figuring Out Your Perfect Brow Shape


1
Find the place where your brows should begin. Finding just the right spot for your inner brows to start is key to creating perfect brows, since starting too far in could throw off the balance of your face.To figure out where your inner brows should start, use the following technique:
Take a pencil or another long, thin instrument. Line it up from the corner of your eye to the edge of your nose.
The place where the instrument overlaps your brow is where it should begin. Mark the spot by making a dot there with an eyeliner pencil. Repeat on the other side.




2
Find the spot where your eyebrow arch should peak. Most eyebrows naturally arch around the eye, and finding the place where the arch peaks is essential to making them look perfect. Use the same long, thin instrument to figure out where your arch should peak by following this technique:
Look straight ahead in the mirror.
Line up the instrument with the outer edge of your nostril and the outer edge of your iris.
The place where the instrument crosses your brow is where your arch should peak. Mark it with a dot using an eyeliner pencil. Repeat on the other side.


3
Determine where your brow should end. Finding the right place for brow to end is as important as where it begins. You want your brows to frame your eyes gracefully. Find the right spot by lining up the long, thin instrument in this way:
Line up the instrument from the edge of your nostril to the outer corner of your eye.
The place where the instrument crosses your outer brow is the place where it should end. Mark the spot with a dot using an eyeliner pencil.


4
Determine how thick you want your brows to be.Perfect eyebrows for someone else may not be perfect eyebrows for you. The thickness of your eyebrows is a personal decision that should be influenced by the following factors:
The size of your eyes. If your eyes are on the bigger side, thicker brows can help balance them out. If they're small, thick brows might overshadow them, so you'll want to choose a brow thickness that's slightly thinner.
The size of your lips. A good general rule of thumb is that your eyebrows should be about the same thickness as your upper lip. This can help 'tie the look together'. If you look at pictures of models in magazines than you'll notice this is the case with many of them.
The distance between your brows and your eyes. If you have a low brow bone that is set close to your eyes, you'll want to pull up your brows a bit to lighten the area. If you have a high brow line spaced well above your eyes, heavier brows might provide a more balanced look.
Your style preferences. Sometimes thick, bushy eyebrows are in style, and sometimes more people prefer them to be thin and well-tailored. Think about what style you're going for before you dive into plucking your brows.

Method 2 of 3: Plucking and Filling Your Brows


1
Brush your brow hairs up. Take a small eyebrow brush or a fine-toothed comb and brush the hairs up in the direction they grow. This will make it easier to figure out which hairs need to be plucked.


2
Tweeze the hairs outside the dots you drew. Now it's time to start shaping your brows according to the plans you laid out. Make sure you're in a well-lit area so that you don't accidentally tweeze too much. Grasp each hair firmly with the tweezers and pluck one at a time in the direction they grow.
Start with the inner brow, closest to your nose. Use the tweezers to pluck the hairs that are closer to your nose than the dot.
Tweeze the hairs that fall outside the dot on your outer brow.
Tweeze hairs above and below the arch area. Look at the place where your arch should peak and carefully tweeze around it to make the peak slightly more prominent.
Tweeze the bottom of the brow. Pluck stray hairs under your brow and shape the bottom. If you decided you want thick brows, stop after plucking the hairs that grow outside the brow. If you want thinner brows, carefully pluck the underside of the brow to lighten it up.


3
Tweeze the other brow. Now that you've shaped the first one, take extra care to make sure the other brow matches it in shape and size. Use the same method to tweeze the hairs on the inside of the inner brow dot, the outside of the outer brow dot, around the arch peak, and on the underside of the brow. Examine both brows in the mirror to make sure they are even.


4
Don't overpluck. Avoid the temptation to keep plucking hairs in order to create two perfectly even brows. You risk plucking away too much hair. Eyebrow hair can take 6 - 8 weeks to grow back, and sometimes it's gone for good. Take care of the hair you have.

Method 3 of 3: Styling Your Brows


1
Fill in the brows. Take an eyebrow pencil in a shade close to that of your brows and make light strokes in the direction that your hair grows to help fill out your look. Eyebrow hair doesn't usually grow completely evenly, so filling in the gaps is a necessity for creating the perfect brows.
Don't create an arch where there isn't one, or try to lengthen your brows with a pencil. It will be too obvious that you drew extra parts.
For a heavier look, choose an eyebrow pencil that's a shade or two darker than your natural brow shade.


2
Use a brow comb. Gently comb them into shape so that no hairs are poking up in the wrong direction. If you filled in your brows with pencil, take care not to smudge it when you comb your brows.


3
Apply brow gel. This helps your brows stay in place all day, and prevents them from getting messy under windy conditions. Apply a dab to the inner part of your brow and either smooth it to the outer part of your brow with the tip of your finger or use the brow brush to comb it in.
If you don't have brow gel, you can use hairspray instead. Spray your finger with hair spray and wipe it across your brow.
You can also use a dab of petroleum jelly in place of brow gel.

Tips

Pluck in the evening so you skin has time for the redness to go away.
To minimize the pain of plucking, do it right after you get out of the shower.
Never shave them as you will get dry skin and they will become itchy.
To minimize the pain, wash your face with warm water. This will open up your eyebrow-pores and make the pain bearable.

7 Intimate Secrets Women Wish Men Knew

Everyone hopes for a receptive and sensitive partner who ultimately gets her without her speaking a word. These few tips might just help you be that man to your woman.
Making her feel important while having good conversation is like an aphrodisiac. There are just some things a woman expects her man to do or say without her having to verbally point it out. These gestures are just what you need to arrive at an explosive sexual relationship.

1. Most women appreciate displays of affection outside the bedroom: This includes non-sexual touching and little bit of tenderness. A little stroke of your face or hair is part of it too. Unfortunately, men accept this within the four walls of the bedroom.

2. Sex isn’t separate from a woman’s life: It means she has to first get in the mood before the kissing and touching. Satisfying sex is as a result of a good feeling all day. Which means she can’t be passionate if her man doesn’t make her enthusiastic enough.

3. Women get turned-on by great talk: This is why some women have sex after a great first date. Making her feel important while having good conversation is like an aphrodisiac. These intimate moments gets her in the right mood for sex.

4. Sex shouldn’t be like work: Men sometimes get too serious in the bedroom, women love to have fun in the bedroom. Women are more relaxed when sex comes with playfulness, this takes pressure from both partners.

5. Women sometimes feel insecure about their looks: For women who have been married for a long time, it’s quite normal to think her man may not find her as appealing as she used to be. As a man who cares a lot for his woman, it’s left to you to sense these insecurities and turn them around.


6. What happens after sex matters a lot to her: The tender loving care a woman needs goes beyond main sexual act. A woman appreciates it when a man knows how to go about these needs.

7. Great sex doesn’t equal to an orgasm: Most women enjoy pre-intimacy than the actual sex act. Although most men think they’ve done a good job when their women climax, but reaching orgasm isn’t always essential. What matters is the connection you both have before and during sex.
Source: http://www.naijaonpoint.com/relationship/secrets-women-wish-men-knew.html#ixzz3tRZxfOci

5 Things Guys Secretly Want From You (But Will Never Tell You)

One key difference I’ve observed between men and women is that women seem to be much more aware of what they want and need in a relationship…and aren’t afraid to express it. Men, for various reasons, aren’t always so in tune with what they really need in order to feel loved and fulfilled in a relationship, and the ones who are aware will seldom come right out and say it.

It makes sense from an intellectual standpoint. From an early age women learn to cultivate close, intimate relationships and they learn what makes them feel cared for and understood. Male friendships don’t usually have the same depth and level of closeness, so men typically enter the realm of emotional awareness later in life, usually when they form relationships with women.

A guy generally won’t ask for what he needs because a lot of the time, he doesn’t even know what it is. But then when you give it to him, it feels amazing. He feels appreciated and loved, and he comes to love you even more.

And with that, here are the top five things guys secretly love and want from you, but will seldom ask for.


1. Compliments

No man will ever come right out and tell you he likes it when you compliment him because it’s a weird thing to ask for, and also not very “manly,” if you will. But just because he doesn’t ask, doesn’t mean he doesn’t crave.

Men also feel insecure about their physical appearance, and they don’t get nearly as much validation as we do. Think about it, when a guy posts a picture on Facebook or goes out with friends he doesn’t have a loyal band of cheerleaders commenting on how great he looks. When it comes to his physical appearance, you’re really his only source of compliments, so load him up! Tell him you think that shirt is sexy on him, that you can tell he’s been working out hard at the gym, that a certain color makes his eyes look even more striking, that his hair looks sexy pushed back … you get the point!

2. When you ask for his advice

You know how amazing it feels when your man cherishes and adores you and showers you with love? Well he gets the same feeling when you ask for his advice. Men have an overwhelming need to feel useful, to feel like they have something of value to offer. This is true in all areas of his life and especially so in relationships. He wants to feel like he is adding to your life in a meaningful way, and you can help him feel this way by soliciting his advice and opinions.

When I get relationship questions from readers I love sharing them with my husband just to get his take and insights. Usually I already know the answer to the problem (I’ve been doing this for quite a while now!) but I still love sharing it with him and getting his feedback. And he absolutely lights up when given the chance to offer his input.

Men in general are very solution-oriented and thrive when there is something to be solved. That’s why a man will typically try to solve your problems when you talk to him about something that’s upsetting you, something most women get frustrated by because all we really want in those moments is emotional support, and men don’t realize that giving said support is more of a solution to the problem than actually solving the problem! (And if your guy does this, try not to get angry at him, just kindly tell him you appreciate his advice, but right now you just want his emotional support.)

3. When you desire him

You don’t always need to wait for him to initiate physical affection. Men love feeling like they’re irresistible—like you are turned on by him and can’t get enough—so flirt with him, seduce him, initiate physical intimacy. A huge turn-on for a man is seeing how turned on his woman is by him!


4. When you tell him what you want in a way that makes him feel good

Men want to make the woman they are with happy; this is actually one of the biggest driving forces for a man in a relationship. In fact, if a man doesn’t think he can make a particular woman happy, he most likely won’t want to continue a relationship with her. And men appreciate it when you tell them how to make you happy as long as it’s done in the right way. The right way does not include nagging, guilting, lecturing, or shaming. It entails lovingly telling him what you like and what you want in a way that makes him feel good. Framing something as, “I really love it when you …” rather than “Why don’t you ever …” is a good place to start.

When you lecture a man or come down on him for what he’s doing wrong, he feels like a failure. He also feels like a little kid being scolded by mommy for misbehaving. When you tell him what you want in a way that makes him feel good, he feels good about doing it and good about himself because he knows how to make you happy.
5. Support

One of the greatest feelings to a man in a relationship is feeling like he has a woman in his corner, someone who believes in him no matter what and sees him for the great man he is and the amazing man he could be. There is comfort in knowing that you will be there for him even if he fails, especially since failure is the hardest thing for men to deal with. When you support him and believe in him, and it comes from a true and genuine place, he feels on top of the world, like he can do anything. Most women don’t realize the enormous impact our approval has on men; in fact, I would say your guy is starving for your approval. When you’re proud of him, it is a huge driving force. Conversely, when you’re disappointed in him, it’s crippling and makes him feel like a worthless loser.

Bonus:

All the five things listed actually fall under the umbrella of the number one thing all men want but will never tell you and that is … appreciation.

Appreciation is probably the biggest motivator for a man and it’s something most are starved for. In order to keep your relationship happy and fulfilling, it’s crucial to express appreciation for all the things he does, both big and small. As I mentioned, men are starved for your approval and they need to feel like winners. When you express genuine appreciation, you’re killing two birds with one stone and giving him the greatest gift you can give. The worst thing you can do is to expect certain things from him or act entitled.

Appreciation isn’t just about what he does for you, it’s about appreciating who he is. Show appreciation for his good qualities, his values, his ambitions, his life choices. Find those things you love about him and show him you appreciate them. Don’t assume he just knows, because he doesn’t. This is probably the most powerful and transformative relationship skill that you can ever master.

Got something else to add? Share it in comments!

Sourced From: Anewmode.com by Sabrina Alexis

10 Definitive Ways To Tell You’re In Love With The Right Someone

Falling in love is one of the most exciting, rewarding and scariest things you could ever do.

Once you’re in love with someone, it’s hard to remember how you lived without him or her. Of course, you were alive before you met this person, but you really didn’t start “living” until the two of you met.

I remember when I first fell in love with my girlfriend; it was a very scary feeling, as I had managed to elude love for the entirety of my life before her. I specifically remember the transition from when I liked Vanessa to when I began to love her.

Vanessa went from being someone who made me smile to being the greatest catalyst of the happiness and joy in my life. She went from a gorgeous girl I met to the most beautiful girl I know. She went from my crush to the love of my life.

Everyone experiences love differently, and at different times. Even the meaning of love is extremely subjective, but I say for certain that anyone who’s experienced it knows it’s the best feeling ever.

Here are 10 ways to know if you might be in love — rather than in like — with someone:

1. The best part of your day

As Childish Gambino said, “When I’m alone, I’d rather be with you.” Seeing my girlfriend is always the highlight of my day. If you really love someone, you never truly get tired of him or her.

No matter how great your day might be going, your special person will make it better. When you just like someone, he or she might make your day better, but probably isn’t the best part.

2. The first person you think about

Your love will be the first person you think about when you wake up and the last person you think about before you go to sleep. When something good happens to you, this is the first person you want to tell.

When something bad happens to you, you look to this person for support.

3. Prioritize above your own needs

Love is selfless. I was the most important person in my world until I met my girlfriend. Once I fell in love with her, her needs became much more important than my own.

This is just how love is. Your needs always seem trivial in comparison to your significant other’s needs.

4. You’d do anything

If I tried to construct a list of things I wouldn’t do for my girlfriend, the list would be pretty empty. When you’re in love with someone, you do whatever you can to make the person happy.

When you like someone, you may feel like there is a lot you would do for the person, but you have your limits. True love knows no limits.

5. You are never afraid to express your feelings in public

I have this semi-bad habit of telling the world how in love I am with my girlfriend.

When you’re truly in love, you want everyone to know. You are not bashful about your feelings by any means. When you like someone, there is a lot of holding back on how you feel.

6. You love the imperfections

My girlfriend is the most beautiful girl I know, but she does have some imperfections. But, to me, they’re not imperfections — they’re unique qualities and things I love.

When I tease her about them, she thinks I am making fun of her, but I am truly just admiring them. Love is the ability to know and accept someone’s faults.

You may know the imperfections of a person you like, but having the capacity to embrace them likely won’t happen unless you fall in love.

7. You think long-term

When you’re in love with someone, it’s hard to imagine a future without the person in it. For this reason, you will think long-term about how you can build a life with this person.

You won’t give in to short-term temptations that might mess up your long-term goals. When you just like someone, thinking long-term can be pretty scary.

8. You become a better person

No one is perfect; we all have room for improvement. But, being in love will force you to work on these things.

You want to become the best version of yourself for the person you love. I am a better person now than I was before I met my girlfriend.

9. Your feelings are unconditional

When you love someone unconditionally, it means that your love knows no conditions and is absolute. I don’t actually like the term “unconditional love” because I think it’s redundant — I believe all true love is unconditional.

When you like someone, your feelings change depending on the condition.

10. Your love is your best friend

Sometime along the way, my girlfriend became my best friend. I believe this to be true for most people who fall in love.

Your significant other becomes your partner in crime. You feel like, together, you can take on the world.

Sourced from : Elitedaily.com

Interesting Things You Didn't Know About The Female Body

There are actually many proven differences between men and women. Many people think of these in terms of behavior, but there are also many interesting ways women’s bodies react. Following are some of the most surprising facts about the female body.

Some Women See More Colors

The gene that allows for the perception of the color red is found on the X chromosome. When women have a mutation of this gene on one of their chromosomes, it enhances one’s ability to see a wide spectrum of hues of this color. This is believed to have developed as a way to distinguish between insects, berries and foliage, but the modern woman usually uses it when buying sundresses.

Women Use Twice As Much Brain Power

Scientists at the Indiana University School of Medicine used MRIs to monitor the brain activity of men and women listening to passages from a novel. The brain activity of men appeared almost exclusively on the left side of the brain associated with speech and listening, but women also showed activity on the right side of the brain associated with creativity.

Estrogen Affects Dental Health
Surges in estrogen can cause gums to swell, and this can increase a woman’s chances of developing gingivitis. It is important for pregnant women to have dental exams and cleanings as frequently as every three months. Estrogen also makes dry sockets more likely, so women needing extractions should schedule them during the last week of the menstrual cycle for the lowest estrogen levels.

The Female Face Photographs Better
Women have skin that starts to age faster at middle age, but men still tend to look older in general. This is due to the fact that women usually have more supple skin along with the fact that men constantly shave and apply aftershave. Higher levels of testosterone also tend to make skin look oily.

Women Are More Wary
Carnegie Mellon researchers have evidence that aversion to dangerous (or just creepy) creatures may be stronger in females from the time of birth. They showed infants photos of spiders and human beings. Female babies tended to spend more time looking at people compared to looking at spiders, but male babies spent an equal time on both. The theory is that women evolved to be more wary of dangerous creatures in order to better protect their children.

There’s a Reason Women Need Their Own Bathrooms
The lower portion of the colon (known as the sigmoid) is often longer in women. Combine this with the reproductive organs of the female, and it results in more digestive components tucked in a smaller space. The system of a woman has less room to expand when plagued by excess gas or food, so females are more likely to experience gastrointestinal distress.

Free Waxing?
The hair “down there” tends to remove itself after a little less than a month. This is nothing compared to hair on the head that can last for as long as seven years.

Intuition in the Nose
Researchers have shown that women of childbearing age can pick up familiar scents even at very low levels. Women can also tell when their partner is feeling stressed out just by sniffing their shirt.

Cancel That Drinking Competition
Women produce less of the enzyme that breaks down ethanol in the stomach. When drinking the same amount of alcohol as men, women have a higher blood alcohol level even when controlling size differences. There is also less water to dilute the alcohol, and this makes the negative effects much stronger.

You’re Not Overly-Emotional… Your Body Is
Adult females cry around 5.3 times per month compared to the 1.4 times for men. It has been shown that women have tear glands that are built differently to those of men, and this allows women to cry more easily. The hormone prolactin regulates the development of tear glands, and women have up to 50 percent more of it by the age of 18.

The Pain Threshold
When men and women suffer from the same health conditions, women actually suffer more. It has been shown that women feel pain more intensely than men. The solace is that high levels of estrogen can trigger the body’s ability to reduce pain, but it can produce a more intense response whenever estrogen levels drop.

He Cheated, She Stayed: One Woman's True Story of Getting Over Infidelity Part 2(final)

I tried to downplay what a chump I'd been for not seeing this coming. When I told one friend about Sam's infidelity, I said, "I know it's not like he's literally the last person on Earth you'd expect to have an affair...."

"Nope," she cut me off, "he pretty much is."

And honestly? I'd thought so, too. I fell in love with Sam with the kind of total trust and joy a child feels when she jumps off a table into a grown-up's arms. I knew with utter certainty that he would catch me.

After we got engaged, he asked me to promise that if I were ever tempted to cheat on him, I'd come to him first and tell him, so we could address whatever part of our relationship had gone awry and was making me crave attention elsewhere. I laughed, because it seemed like such a ridiculously hopeful request. And then I gave him my word. Did I ask him to promise me the same thing? Of course not. It never even occurred to me. Sam's cheating on me was inconceivable.

What is the difference between trusting someone and taking them for granted? I think I fell into that gap. I felt so safe with Sam that it was almost an insult. If you'd stopped me on the street any time during the past five years and asked what was the single thing I loved most about my marriage, I'd have said, "That's easy: trust."

I had grown less in love with Sam than with the security I felt from him.

While it was happening, of course, I wasn't aware of any of this. I knew we were a little off, but I told myself it was just a passing phase, a rough patch on the long road of married life.

Besides, Sam and I went to great lengths to take care of our relationship. Even during the years when he was cheating, we went out on date nights every week (except when he was traveling for work—or for "work"). Every Thursday, as I stood before the mirror putting on eyeliner and brushing my hair, the children would mewl and cling to me like kittens. "Why do you have to go out with Daddy again?"

I would stop what I was doing and gather them around me and explain that our family was a wonderful, precious thing, and that my relationship with their father was at the heart of it. We had to keep our relationship strong for the whole family to be strong.

And sometimes, a few hours later, when Sam and I finished dinner (we never went to movies or shows; we always preferred to talk) and the bill came and we balked at the cost, one of us would offer up what had become a standing joke between us: "Well, at least it's cheaper than couples therapy." Ha ha. (Ask me, when all this is over, how much we've spent on therapy, individual and group and couples. It will be in the tens of thousands.)

And sometimes we'd have a fight, and after it was over we'd congratulate ourselves on the way we fought things through, really aired them and resolved them, didn't let them fester. We agreed that one of the strengths of our marriage was that we fought so well.

The idea that Sam had sat there, echoing all these preening verdicts about our marriage while he was screwing Daphne on the side, walloped me one day, many months after his confession. This kind of thing happened a lot: Some out-of-the-blue realization—some piece of the puzzle I'd somehow missed—would, out of nowhere, just stun me. Each time this happened, I went spiraling down into a three- or four-day depression. After a while, it occurred to me that maybe my mind was parceling out the pain, because I never could have handled it all at once.


Yet interspersed with the dark whirlpools were small, sparkling moments when I would remember why I loved my tall and handsome husband—and why I liked him, too: his intelligence and sincerity, his patience and humor, the pleasure I took in his easy company, day to day.

And so, after some of my anger had dissipated, I began to take a long, hard look at myself. I had to admit that I was partly to blame, not for Sam's affair—that was his own stupid decision—but for the cloud of disappointment and annoyance that had become a permanent feature of our marriage. I had grown to resent him when our kids were babies—a time when his needs, even his love, felt to me like just one more tiresome burden.

Oh, I'd never stopped being generous and sweet to Sam in small ways, but deep down I had gradually divested myself of our marriage. Many years ago, I read in a magazine (Esquire, I think) that men care less about how their wives look than about how they look at them. In other words, our extra ten pounds matter far less than our critical, disappointed gaze. It had been a long time since I'd bothered to regard Sam adoringly. How could I when he neglected to call and tell me he'd be home late from work again? Or left his underwear in a wad behind the bathroom door again? Or was too busy to help when I prepared a dinner party for our friends...again? We were in a standoff—neither of us getting what we really needed, and neither of us willing to perform the first act of generosity. It felt easier—kinder, even (for the fight it avoided)—to give up, to just not care.

Of course, not caring is fine as long as you really don't care. But in our case, we actually did. A habitual mild bitterness, a casual scorn, became my default attitude toward Sam. He, meanwhile, was boiling with anger. He just didn't know what to do with it—until Daphne came along and offered him an outlet.
It is very hard to fall back in love with someone you know as well as you know a spouse after 12 years. You have none of the momentum of early love to propel you forward, and all the habits that drive you crazy to drag you down. But we both cared for our marriage enough to want to give it a chance, and to try our best not to damage it further. So we set some ground rules (which, okay, we broke fairly regularly): First, rather than blaming each other for what went wrong, we would each talk only about ourselves and how we felt—hurt, scared, unappreciated, whatever. Second, we would try to put aside our own anger sometimes and really listen to each other. And third, we'd spend as much time as we could not talking about the affair, but just talking—about the news, or our friends, or our crazy siblings. We'd go to concerts, and on hikes and bike rides with the kids. We'd cook together. We'd hold hands.

It's too soon for me to say how this will all turn out. There are still times when I am suddenly appalled to realize that I am married to a man who could do to me what Sam did. But here's the thing: Sam is appalled—and ashamed, too—and he was appalled and ashamed even when he was with Daphne.

Meanwhile, I do know this: Much as I am loath to admit that anything good could come out of his affair, our marriage now is, in important ways, often better than it ever was. Sam doesn't dismiss his anger in hopes that it will go away—and he's getting better at pinpointing some of the vulnerable feelings that the anger, like a guard dog, protects. And I've begun paying attention to the parts of him that I fell in love with 12 years ago, and that I never stopped loving, though I let them get buried beneath piles of laundry and dirty dishes. I even try to gaze at him adoringly, though sometimes it comes off more like a crooked grimace. "I'm trying!" I tell him.

A few weeks ago, I came across the push-up bra in the back of my closet. It embarrassed me—so emphatic, so blatant, more like a prosthetic device than an article of clothing. Yet I couldn't bring myself to throw it away.

So I tried it on for Sam. And it turns out it still works, still makes my breasts look amazing. He liked it.

But then, in the middle of sex, I slipped away, unable to stop myself from wondering: Did he touch her like this? Were her breasts bigger than mine? What did he say when he walked through the door of the hotel room—at any of the 21 different hotels where they had sex?


Sam held me while I cried. Later he asked how long I thought it would take until I was over it, and I had to admit I had no idea. Forever maybe. Or tomorrow.

Then he did something for me that I wasn't able to do for myself. He pulled me out of that ugly, bleak chapter of the past—our past, now—and back into the just-fine present. He said, "I am with you now. I love you now. I want to make our marriage really good again, starting now."

I blew my nose, took a deep breath, and found myself in his arms—the arms of someone utterly familiar to me, and also completely new and unknown. Which, it turns out—even after all the shock, the hurt, the betrayal—is still where I most want to be.

From the April 2010 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine.