This second book Romance 101 started as a honest-to-goodness search for a way out of what I saw as the unbearable straitjacket of suburbia. Two kids, house in the suburbs – check. Garden - check. SUV – check. Gym contract – check. Book club – check. Total suburban mom nightmare – check, check. I felt like the second we had popped the first kid we were on some sort of well-greased path into relationship demise. Just a slow but steady slope where the mundane details replace the magical. Forget that.
Everyone around me was getting separated, and then divorced. Single momdom even seemed infinitely more glamorous than the years of quiet sublimation stretching endlessly before us.
I considered leaving, chasing the heady romance of a fling. But the truth was, I knew was that I wanted my relationship. I wanted this man in my life, for as long as he would have me. I wasn’t ready to throw in the towel, I just didn’t want us to follow a path just because it was the only one we knew.
So I started looking for people who have tried and found other ways to have relationships, to raise families and have fun. Crazy fun. Great fun. And I found them all over the place. People living unconventional lives, having fun and raising kids. Not all of their methods fitted my idea of a relationship, but hey, that was the point. I was open to looking for something that could work. So the series of articles I wrote developed into a talk, and then into a book. And here they are. There are some people who do some wacky things, there are some people who do some really sensible things. Maybe some of them will work for y
When we were in our twenties and we looked at those boring married folks, we swore on pain of death that we wouldn’t become like them. You know the ones … those older couples who leave dinner parties at 10 p.m. like clockwork to climb into bed so that they can get up early enough to watch their kids play soccer.
Not us, you promised. We will stay hip and happening; we’ll be out there living our dreams, having hot sex and singing in our knickers till the sun comes up.
And then one night, just as the rest of the partygoers are opening up the third bottle for Jägerbombs, you find yourself standing up and sheepishly saying your farewells:
‘We’ve got to catch an early night,’ you hear yourself say. ‘Mikey’s got a rehearsal for the school fashion show at an ungodly hour.’
Or: ‘Oops, will you take a look at the time? The babysitter charges double after ten.’
Argh!
It was seamless, scary and so little fun becoming part of The Parental Set.
If you don’t catch it now, you’ll find yourself listening to the Sex Pistols and wearing tartan before you can hum, ‘no fun, my babe, no fun’.
It feels like a lifetime ago when it was just you and your man, and life was crazily adventurous. You were partying into the wee hours, waking late on the weekends, sleeping in. Great dates, great laughs and hot sex, until … your first kid. The first one just kind of happened, and while you were still reeling with the shock of its arrival, the second one slipped out.
Two seconds into being a parent and there were no more dates, no more naughty laughs, and the last time you had sex was after six glasses of sangria at the primary school’s Italian evening. And you’re not all that sure it was with your husband anyway. Sure, you love the pesky little critters, but it’s not them you’re worried about … it’s your relationship.
The Grand Old Love Affair is over. You share more intimacy with your IUD than with your husband; you have better conversations with your pedicurist; and, at the end of the day, your kids are far more fun than your man.
What’s worse is that you don’t even have the time to care if he’s just not that into you any more, not when you’re doing the 5 a.m. lift for swimming training in a terrycloth robe with an eye mask stuck to your hairline. In fact, a whole lot of the time you’re not that into him either.
How did it go so wrong?
## "Throw away the rule book on relationships: Romance 101 is going to help couples find a way to put the va-va-voom back into their relationship, 21st-century style."
## Every couple remembers the great dates, great laughs and hot sex they had before the kids arrived, but you are now more intimate with your IUD than with your husband, and he would rather watch TV than have sex. But help is at hand.
## 'This book is set to become the new relationship bible for the Noughties’ couple, because making a family work is about becoming more in touch with who you are and not about following an outdated formula for relationships.
Romance 101 is every couple’s unconventional guide on how to make their relationship work."
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