The V-Word

“The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through eternity.” –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Twenty-six years ago today was a Saturday. I know this because I was married at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. Well, at least there was a young woman of 22 who was married that day. I still look vaguely like her, or at...

The Anniversary Edition: Listen this week to Wendy and her oldest friend Sarah talk about Making Love Sustainable in her 26- year old- marriage. Share in the sweet lessons of spilled milk and the many memories of what it takes to keep saying yes to love. Our closest friends are our most gentle and generous teachers when it comes to learning to love. Listen to these two old friends share their...

“Taking joy in living is a woman’s best cosmetic.” ~Rosalind Russell

I love the day that I get my hair done. I have long been a fan of hair color; ever since mine started turning grey while my youngest daughter was still in preschool. I still am not sure how old I will be when I give up this trick on nature and bear witness to how grey I am. Everyone assures me it is still too soon. Besides...

“Love is a fabric which never fades, no matter how often it is washed in the water of adversity and grief.” -Unknown

Our relationships are truly the fabric of our lives. Living in a big family with so many people in the process of individuating can make for a compelling laboratory. It is rarely dull, although not frequently full of drama. The one rule that I have imposed relentlessly on my...

“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break. “ ~William Shakespeare

Shakespeare himself would be overcome by the enormity of the tragedy that Polandfaces today. Within hours, the brightest minds and most committed public servants, along with the ranks of the Polish courageous past leaders perished at once in a burst of flame over the very...

“All things appear and disappear because of the concurrence of causes and conditions. Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else.” -Buddha

Science is proving what great spiritual teachers have been saying for millennia. We do not exist individually, there is no action that we can take or perform that is not connected to all of us. Our lives exist within an...

“Life is eternal, and love is immortal, and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.” ~Rossiter Worthington Raymond

I stood at the grave site of Lilly’s father today. I had only met him once when we looked at the life stories of eleven-year-olds filling the gymnasium of the middle school where our daughters are good friends. We marveled at how the children...

The question of whether intimacy and love-making should be spontaneous or planned is one that gets between many couples. There are two issues in question here and it is important to tease them apart if you are going to make sense of either.

“Passion is the quickest to develop and the quickest to fade. Intimacy develops more slowly, and commitment more gradually still.” — Robert Sternberg

The...

“The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom…for we never know what is enough until we know what is more than enough.” -William Blake

Today I took delivery of 4000 lbs of personal lubricant. It was the largest single delivery ever made to my business and the biggest bet I have ever made on my potential success. Betting on myself is getting easier and easier since I have started the...