After nearly a decade together, my husband and I both agree that we’ve gotten a bit complacent. We don’t go to bed together, we don’t say, “I love you” nearly as often, we’ve restored to buying appliances as gifts (even though we swore we never would), and we often spend Friday nights in watching Kitchen Nightmares.
Basically, we’re your average married couple.
So one Friday night a few weeks ago, during one of our Kitchen Nightmares pseudo date nights, a commercial for a dating website came on. I mused out loud that I wondered if we would be matched up if we were to both sign up. His answer? A resounding “no.”
And not because we’re not compatible. But we’re so polar opposite in so many ways that many of our friends thought we were crazy to start dating in the first place. In fact, the first time I met his sister, a full year after we’d been together, she said to me (and I quote), “I hope you don’t expect him to settle down; Dan’s not relationship material.”
Hrm.
The next day I was at a local bookstore and saw the book, Cheat on Your Husband (with Your Husband): How to Date Your Spouse. I assumed this must be a sign from somewhere, so I picked it up, grabbed a latte, and curled up in a corner. To say the next few hours were life changing might be a stretch, but to say I was fully engrossed would not be. And now the book sits right on my nightstand.
Cheat on Your Husband was written by dating and relationship expert Andrea Syrtash. You may have seen her on Oprah.com, the Today show, VH1, or seen her in Marie Claire, Women’s Health, or the New York Times. The girl’s got creds a mile long. She’s married, too, so she knows a thing or two about the river running dry if you know what I mean.
In the book, she offers practical advice and simple steps to getting your marriage back on track. She’s not preachy or judgey, but does recommend ways to prioritize things a little differently. She’s funny, too, which makes it easy to read the advice without falling asleep. For the book, she interviewed hundreds of women, with and without kids, to find out what’s working.
A bit of what you’ll get:
- A breakdown of the actual chemical differences in your brain when you’re dating vs. married
- A gentle push to explore our own interests and hobbies, outside of the house and the duties of being a mom and wife
- Ways to fight fair
- Changing the way you perceive yourself
- Ways to look at your husband as a love instead of the father of your child
What you won’t get:
- Advice on how to save a failing marriage
- Any advice that suggests you really should cheat on your husband
- Any new advice that hasn’t been gone over before in other relationship books
I would recommend reading it, for nothing more than the reminder that having a good, lusty make out session in the middle of the kitchen on a Saturday afternoon is absolutely encouraged.
photo credit: amazon
