Not long ago, The New York Times reported a list of “money disorders” linked to our economy. Overspending. Underspending (hoarding); serial borrowing (we all know what that is); financial enabling (too much money forked over to adult kids); and so forth. Stars like Wynona Judd (overspending), admitted to once buying too many cars and Harleys, but doesn’t anymore.  

But “financial infidelity” caught my eye: “Cheating on a spouse by spending and lying about it.”

Oh dear: Is that a disorder?  If I told my spouse what, say, a new ski helmet costs (which I won’t buy, but still, mine is a little shaky on my head), he’d wonder about my sanity, not to mention the new goggles required to fit over that ski helmet. I repeat: I’m not doing it, so don’t call Richard and tell him I’m cheating on him).

Who reports back to a spouse what she spends? Unless you’re married to a guy who knows–really knows– retail, what woman in her right mind tells her spouse, over a pizza, “Darling, guess what? The bag our daughter wants has been reduced to a $125 from $450.”? Most men I know don’t see $125 as a bargain for anything but a new bicycle, but most girls have peer pressure going on that, whether we like it or not, means something to them. (My stepdaughter and I joke that while we happily wear faux Uggs bought from Costco, what we we get her daughter Emily are the real ones. Why? Because she wouldn’t be caught dead in ours.) Does a man who hasn’t bought a shirt for himself since the Vietnam war know what a nice dress shirt costs?  (I tear off tags when I buy my husband clothes, even on final sale, financially unfaithul wretch that I am. Otherwise he wouldn’t wear them. And we wouldn’t be able to return them. And he’d wear nothing other than the Michigan sweatshirt our grandson Adam gave him when he went off to college, the one that’s now permanently stained with coffee, red wine, and chicken grease.

 I mean look, I’m all for codifying emotional problems—like Grief, for instance—the newest prospective disorder on the DSM’s to-do list. Yes, let’s give more support and counseling to those who feel they’re supposed to be up-and-at- ‘em after that one-year mark we traditionally allow for mourning! But private spending is not a disorder, unless of course you’re Bernie Madoff..  If it’s not hurting anybody, back off and pay for it and stop naming names. And just for fun, ask any cosmetics, jewelry, clothing or bedding store salesperson the number of ways women divide their purchases among credit cards, cash, debit cards and gift certificates. I’ve done that before, and it’s a field of its own, this Byzantine divvying process: As one saleswoman at Bed Bath and Beyond told me, “Hey, it’s the only way to get decent towels and sheets.” Who wants to report back on one’s genius cost-cutting savvy every time she purchases soaps and books? Being discreet, in retail as in love, isn’t deceit. It’s called privacy.  If we decide to call it infidelity, then most every woman I know is a harlot. 

Right after the new year and just before Valentine’s Day, I always like to get the feel of what’s going on with love and marriage across the nation,  and to make a few predictions for the coming year.  Here they are: Love in 2012.

1. Everyone of all ages will be dating like mad.  An unprecedented 110-million singles in America means that they—not married people–now make up the majority of households. And they’re dating! Millions of adults of all ages—30s through 70s–are  between marriages, against marrying, or on the way to remarriages.

 2. We will become increasinglystarry-eyed about marriage, even as we become increasingly disenchanted, skittish and cynical about it. It is a psychological fact that we long for, and idealize,institutions that promise safety and security. The military. The church. Marriage. Anything that was once reliable but is now increasingly fragile, and even endangered, is a prime target for our nostalgia.  I predict that, even as we divorce more often. sooner and more bitterly, we will increasingly  long for the “good old days” when marriage lasted forever. Because it so rarely does.

3. We will see online dating sites scrambling to nail down love’s chemistry. Although attraction cannot be predicted, we will continue to try to predict it. Dating sites, already promising characterological  compatibility, will scramble to try to promise sexual compatibility. When a computerized program can guarantee great chemistry, I’ll be the first to let you know.

 4. Men will accuse women of acting increasingly the way women have always accused men of acting: Reluctant to commit; eager for more “space,” less eager for sexual exclusivity.  As women become increasingly self-sufficient financially—and less needy of men for purely financial reasons– their demand for emotionally fulfilling relationships will increase. Men, not used to not being needed, and not always skilled at intimacy, will feel increasingly  overwhelmed by women’s demands, and increasingly baffled that women are willing to walk when their demands aren’t met.      

 5.  More couples will cite social media as the reason for their breakup. Already, Facebook and Twitter are implicated in 20 percent of divorce petitions. (More, in England: A recent study puts it at 30 percent.) In 2009, Facebook was cited in one out of every five divorces in the US, and the number 1 online source of  divorce evidence, according to the American Academy of Divorce Lawyers.  A combination of inappropriate messages to the opposite sex, nasty comments posted about separated spouses, and Facebook “friends” reporting spouses’ behavior, is causing a great deal of havoc…and there’s no let-up in sight. 

Now I find the same problem exists in the ebook publishing world. I’ve written a novel with my husband, Richard. It’s a love story for grownups, not for teens or tweens or twenty-something (, although reading about different age groups shouldn’t be a problem for anyone). But it’s not, strictly speaking, a Romance. Nor, although it’s literate, is it  Literary Fiction. It’s adventurous but not Adventure, nor, in any way, Political. It’s a novel, a story– but not a short story and not one in a collection of stories. And so it goes. Oh, and what about the otherworldly presence–Cupid, the God of Love–whom we use for fun….does that mean it’s should be under the category of   “Magical Realism” or “Sprituality”?  No, not either.  As Yul Brynner once put it, speaking as the King of Siam in his own love story with Anna, “Is a puzzlement.”  

      Well, just for fun, check it out. On Amazon you can find our book (A Godsend: A Love Story for Grownups)  under a bunch of headings, but I hope you will take a leap and spend the $2.99 to download it onto your Kindle or Ipad (using the Kindle APP) and just enjoy this love story, whatever genre they want to put it in!

      Please like my Facebook page, follow me on Twitter, join my LinkedIn network, and visit my YouTube channel to receive exclusive content. 

NO! You mean….men have FAILINGS?  YES! says this study! And they are really really horrible ones, too, like “failing to make an effort with their partner’s friends, criticizing their driving and….” get this killer of a flaw: “ the inability to multi-task.”

Oh, but women, there’s more dismal unhappiness and disappointment for you ahead. “Leaving the toilet door open, watching too much sport and poor personal grooming.” Can you imagine living with such a creature? Welcoming such a man into your life? Accepting this merely-two-thirds-perfect ambulatory creature who watches Late Night Sports into your BED?

The last time I saw such dumb studies is when I was studying the Conduct Books of the 19^th century for my book, Marriage Shock. Then, the word “perfection” was reserved exclusively for women. Then, it was men who were looking for the “perfect girl,” or the “perfect wife” and women judged one another according to this completely fake standard of perfection being divined by a culture trying to get women to be happy as exclusively domestic beings.  Conduct books stipulated how to become that perfect girl and perfect wife, listing not only skills(“She must know how to truss a turkey; clean a chimney; wire a lamp,” it says here in one book) but “feminine” attributes (“She must be cheerful at all times, and welcome home her man with a smile every night”). Then, though, punishment for falling short was severe: A girl might not win a mate. At that time, not marrying meant becoming, oh, a prostitute or a governess, since women couldn’t make their own money in the workplace.

But what’s going on here, now that women are assessing men according to a similarly ridiculous list of attributes? What does this mean, that the top characteristic of the supposedly “perfect” guy is “A good personality”? Sound familiar, ladies? And why are we whipping out this mythical notion of perfection, this tailored-for-women kind of guy, NOW? Are we seeing a kind of centuries-long retribution? I’m sure if I looked carefully into the study, some of this would be simply cynical consumerism.

But one thing it shows is that women don’t need men as much as they once did, or such nonsense wouldn’t make headlines. Women wouldn’t be in the position of judging. “Perfection” wouldn’t be a legitimate term.  I’m sorry for these guys, as I was sorry for those turkey-trussing, smiling wives of yore.  Something weird is going on. Creating a male character that doesn’t exist is as frightening as  that smiling, cookie-baking perfect woman we all tried to emulate, and who also never existed.   

Please like my Facebook page, follow me on Twitter, join my LinkedIn network, and visit my YouTube channel to receive exclusive content. 

I know men aren’t thriving right now, for a host of reasons beginning with the economy and including a dramatic sea change in social structure. But when coverlines (and here I mean like the Atlantic’s) undermines one gender’s success by linking it to the other’s failure, they’re playing an old power game that women have no interest in: The If–you’re- not- one- up, you’re-one-down idea of power.  For one thing, women are not at the top of their game just yet: It’s worth remembering how very few women are really at the top (for more about this, see Facebook C.O.O. Sheryl Sandberg’s wonderful TED talk on YouTube). And while women may be outnumbering men in the workforce, they aren’t being paid the same salaries as men.  As it stands,  women will reach the age of sixty and have accumulated a million dollars less than men of sixty who have had exactly the same job.

So we may be getting jobs, but without pay parity, we’re hardly knocking men out of the water financially.  

But the main reason I hate equating women’s success with men’s downfall is that we can take little joy in claiming what we’ve won—the ability to make a living and send kids to school; the capacity to get by without a man’s putting a roof over our heads; the thrill of autonomy and independence–if it’s at the expense of men. The equation pits us against one another, as though we’re taking men’s jobs, gleefully triumphing over our lovers and husbands. We’re not. Yes, we’re competing in the workplace, but competition isn’t sex war. Framing it this way means we have to hide our pleasure or, worse, not get any, from our achievement. So we have to ignore those old, frightened inner voices telling us, “Don’t change the old ways. Don’t beat him at tennis or anything else. Don’t do well.  If you do, you’ll be punishing men.” That’s the formula for a backlash, as well as a way of thinking that, because it punishes both genders at once, we’re just going to have to exorcise.

Please like my Facebook page, follow me on Twitter, join my LinkedIn network, and visit my YouTube channel to receive exclusive content. 

I’d expected some resistance to the pleasure option, since, if marriage isn’t sobering, sanctified, and serious, what is? Ever since the Puritans turned the pursuit of happiness into a frenzy of righteous self-improvement, Americans have opted for betterment over pleasure. We are suspicious of enjoyment for its own sake (pleasure has to improve our blood sugar levels). It’s as though what’s good for you long ago won out over what feels good. But what was special about these readers who chose what we called “The Pleasure Marriage” is that, when I interviewed them individually some time later, they were still having fun. Their marriages, of the ones I was able to find out about, were the happiest.

Often the busiest couples made fun the highest priority. An Oregon woman wrote, “Yes, we work. Yes, we have a little girl. Yes, we care about her. But yes, we go away together, without her, as long as a week.” The price this wife pays for fun with her husband is the criticism of friends and family. “It’s as if,” wrote another Oregon woman who did the same, “having kids is incompatible with having a terrific time without them. Our friends who have spent the last fifteen years putting their children first every second feel very righteous about it–and outraged at us–but we see they’re not so happy now. We are.”

At the risk of sanctifying fun the way we’ve sanctified marriage itself,  let’s face it: people are fleeing marriage. And women are leading this flight. So, if more women married for fun (and risked the family’s and the culture’s censure) is it possible that more women would want to stay married? If more women had a great time with their husbands, would divorce stats—way over half of all divorces are initiated by wives—change?  If pleasing wives were put first on a list of Things to Do, would “wife” become a sexier word?

Please like my Facebook page, follow me on Twitter, join my LinkedIn network, and visit my YouTube channel to receive exclusive content. 

 “Men tend to move on a fairly predictable path to achievement. Women transform themselves only after an awakening. And that awakening is identifiable only in hindsight.”  

 When I wrote about women who had had extramarital affairs, the awakening that transformed these women was not, as you might guess, sexual. (It’s not as if an affair is all about sex, anyway. It can be entirely emotional.) The awakening had to do with their no longer being eligible for the goodness award that was expected of wives, an award they’d all expected to win….until that fateful trip into the lawless land of badness,  at which point they had to rethink everything. Not only had their vision of marriage changed, but of society, of who is good and who is bad and what that means, anyway; and of themselves. Their internal lives changed as profoundly as their external ones, regardless of whether they left their marriages or stayed in them; whether they told their partners about the affair or didn’t. The awakening that occurred, identifiable only in hindsight, was a profound transformation that allowed them to move forward more authentically and with more compassion and less judgment of everyone and everything.  In departing so drastically from the trajectory they’d expected to follow forever, they excavated another person inside, a person they may have never imagined before, or only glimpsed. They saw someone who might be scorned by the world, but who was just another part of themselves, and entirely human. The trick was to keep their humanity while viewing her, not to step outside and judge and censor, while she incorporated her into the woman she thought she knew so well. That’s one kind of achievement, acknowledging your full self, and for these women it took a long time to get there. 

 Almost every woman I know is reinventing herself. She’s looking at her past achievements and wondering what lies next—and exhilarated, or terrified. She’s struggling with money and/or with love—will either be in her life anymore? This reinvention process is hard. It takes enormous patience and kindness toward oneself to get through it.  It takes the same kind of humanity it took for the women who had affairs. “Can I proceed with my life and still be me? Can I make money when my skills are no longer valued, or even paid for? Am I too old, too unskilled, too….whatever? Is the real me acceptable in this world of shrinking options?  Do I have to pretend to be something I’m not (younger, smarter, more energetic) in order to achieve? Can I cop to all that has happened to me, and all that I’ve done, and not disown even one moment of it? 

We’ll keep looking outward, but also at ourselves, kindly and patiently, here in InHeynsight.  

Please like my Facebook page, follow me on Twitter, join my LinkedIn network, and visit my YouTube channel to receive exclusive content. 

She’s close to retirement and has been saving for years. Her adult son doesn’t need money, so her small stash supports the household she shares with her boyfriend of five years, a twice-divorced man  whose money mostly goes to his two young children by his second wife. My guest agreed to this arrangement, feeling strongly that his children should be his first priority, and that they could manage their household expenses together.. BUT, she says, “in  this protracted downturn, none of his money goes to our household; it all goes to his (second) ex-wife’s. I’m wondering where to draw the line. He does, after all, live here. He did, after all, make a financial commitment, albeit a small one, to our life together.”

Before you jump in to judge, remember that the number if women marrying men with children, from both first and second wives, is growing. And the economy isn’t.

Doesn’t it give you new appreciation for pre-nups? I remember thinking, once upon a time, that they were odious reminders to women not only of death and divorce, but that the new brides themselves were disposable and that, moreover, once disposed of, they’d surely be headed for poverty. But I now think prenups are a blessing for everyone. Particularly women.

Here’s the bitter truth for my guest: Money siphoned off from her joint household expenses that now goes to the household of his ex is his concern. But the deal hes breaking with his live-in lover is hers. It galls her that he now even wants more from her—that she support their household, but also that she contribute to paying off his growing debt, on the theory that “they” shouldn’t go more into debt.

No, that won’t fly. First off, they’re not married. Second, her lover’s debts and obligations may morally trump his obligations to her, but her own child (who may one day need money, too), her own home, and her own retirement money trump those obligations. They trump HIM, unless he figures out how to be in this dilemma with her (meaning that HER concerns and obligations be as important as his own).. She now needs to get out of the now0defunct deal and focus on her dwindling assets. He may call her heartless, cold, selfish (more on THAT in another blog). But who, exactly, will be grateful if she gives everything away to this family she doesn’t know? The  ex-wife? Oh, sure. The children? Uh-uh.  She will end up, in her retirement, both  resentful and poor because of a man who never should have begun living with her in the first place, and a family in whose lives she is not even a remote consideration..   

Please like my Facebook page, follow me on Twitter, join my LinkedIn network, and visit my YouTube channel to receive exclusive content. 

“That’s terrific,” I said.

“What’s so terrific? I never see her.”

So I got to thinking about the difference between a man’s desire for more “space” and a woman’s. We ‘ll readily call his “commitmentphobia,” “intimacy problems” and “terror of dependence.” We (make that I) champion hers as “autonomy,”  “independence” and “growth.” I think it’s because for so long, a man’s “I need more space,” was a creepy code phrase for “I’m outtahere.”  A woman, though, tends to mean that she needs more independence, more room for growth and self-expansion within the relationship. 

Yet Elliott was nailing something that he thinks women don’t cop to, and that’s ambivalence.  The big pullback that comes just as you begin to become sexually and emotionally exclusive. The raging contradictory, simultaneous push and pull we experience with  growing intimacy. We, the relationship mavens, the ones with no intimacy problems, don’t admit readily to pulling back in a relationship, to feeling overwhelmed by the demands of love and running from them. “He just wants his dinner cooked, is all,” we say, when a man complains that we’re never home, and blame even our own raging terror of engulfment on his man-centricity, on his supposed  expectation that well nurture and maintain the relationship without giving back same.

Ambivalence plays out for women in weird ways. Some women , like Joan, get very very busy. Some take up marathon running. Some even get sick. (“For three nights in a row after I got engaged to Elliott, Joan says, “I threw up. It wasn’t the flu. It was terror. ”) I have a friend who gets a migraine whenever the topic of lifelong monogamy comes up with her lover.

Some women suddenly lose all feeling for the men they love; a numbness comes over them that disguises the emotional wall they’re building to protect them from love.

Some pull back by pushing too hard. “If you don’t want to get married now, then let’s just forget it,” a friend told her lover after a great weekend, even though it was she who wanted to keep to a weekends-only schedule with him. She’d just suddenly felt too close, too involved, too needy.

You’ve got to know how you react to the simultaneous push and pull of love: how that contradiction makes you, specifically, feel. Then you’ve got to know how you act in response to that contradiction. The acknowledgment alone will alleviate the migraines, the flu symptoms, the numbness.  If your response to ambivalence is to sign up for French lessons, and Spanish lessons, and yoga-instructor courses, you should know it. We’re as entitled to the fight-or-flight response as men are. But we can’t pretend it isn’t operating, just because we supposedly want relationships above all else.

Joan admitted she was afraid of engulfment, and gave up French. “Pas plus,” she assured Elliott. And he took up tennis. And, he stopped calling her a commitmentphobe.

Please like my Facebook page, follow me on Twitter, join my LinkedIn network, and visit my YouTube channel to receive exclusive content. 

We said No Can Do when we saw the futility of trying to be as dutiful and selfless as tradition asked us to be—while having a career, too. We said We Can Do Without This, when facing a terminally unhappy relationship, because we knew we could manage to put a roof over our own heads. We  said, Why Can’t Men Be More Nurturing? and Why Can’t They Do Half The Housework?—when such questions would have been preposterous if husbands continued to be the sole financial providers, as they once were.  

 So now we can be the kind of imperfect wife history prohibited. And, we can leave. We can marry more nurturing, helpful men. We can still keep the contract stipulating the same permanence and fidelity it always did, or we can tailor our marriages to the couple we actually are, if we see ourselves as less upright and traditional. So when we mourn the loss of marriage, the happily-ever-after ideal  we’ve conjured in our heads, remember that we’re actually lamenting the loss of a wonderful fantasy that mostly never was.  We’re mourning the loss of safety and everlasting love that both didn’t necessarily exist in marriage, and didn’t make women happ anyway!  Scary as it is to give up the promise of perfect love forevermore, we can instead make a marriage that works for the couple we really are. If that means marrying men who don’t make very much money; or getting married later than we’d hoped; or not having a big wedding; or reimagining how we will or we won’t have a family; remember that the majority of women wanted it this way. Yes, we really did: The 65 percent of women who leave marriage and initiate divorce,  asked for something else. If that means they, and we, don’t get everything that once was comforting and “perfect,”  at least we’ll figure out a way to create marriage as a huge space, one massive enough for two thriving people to share their two vital lives: That alone is cause for celebration.  

Please like my Facebook page, follow me on Twitter, join my LinkedIn network, and visit my YouTube channel to receive exclusive content.