Valentine's Day is not about expressing heartfelt love, as originally intended in the Middle Ages in the era of courtly romance and the Geoffrey Chaucer reign. Modern Valentine's Day, a $14.6-billion industry according to the National Retail Foundation, is about cliché-ridden cards and hunky gems that often ends up stashed...

I'm looking at That Picture again, the one beamed every 10 minutes on cable news: General David Petraeus in uniform standing very close to Paula Broadwell in a silky blouse, her right breast nearly grazing his torso. If we didn't know what we know now we might think...

When it comes to choosing a lifetime partner, sexual attraction is huge.

As I've traveled the country speaking to women's groups since "The Secret Lives of Wives" was published a year ago, I've fielded hundreds of questions on what it takes to stay married. Most of the queries...

Like millions of other voyeuristic women, I, too, was sucked into Fifty Shades of Grey. The lure that kept me hooked throughout the trilogy on a San Diego beach this summer was definitely not the butt devices or riding crops, nor the quality of the writing.

I was captured by...

What's the real secret to making love last? Readers often ask me this question based on my research for "The Secret Lives of Wives: Women Share What It Really Takes To Stay Married." One common theme in relationships that achieve longevity underscore that this old saying appears to...

Can you love two people at once and stay married?

I have interviewed dozens of wives who love, or have loved, two men simultaneously. They have shared different strategies -- and different outcomes -- to this "euphoric, painful juggling act" as one 42-year-old wife put it. She says she "deeply...

"Help! I hate my husband."

This is how a letter starts in my Inbox today. It's from a 41-year-old woman named Cindy in Dallas who has been married for 12 years. I get hate mail like this using slightly different language several times a week. Substitute the word "hate" for...

We vow each year to make over sagging bodies with fewer fatty foods and more exercise. We can also makeover sagging marriages. I've seen it happen often in the relationships I dissected in The Secret Lives of Wives, turnarounds that are inspirational for any couple struggling with their...

Here's some advice from a midlife wife: If you're single and searching, don't be deterred by the quickie marriages of celebrities -- stars with perfect bodies and zillions of dollars -- who recite "I do" as if it's a line from one of their scripts. Many marriages do last a...

It's tough to listen to your elders when you are young and in love, or in lust, and about to be married. But the collective wisdom from the 200 long-married women I interviewed for my new book The Secret Lives of Wives: Women Share What It Really Takes...

My parents told me that it was a mistake to go on a "pre-honeymoon" in 1987 with my fiancé, that it would douse the magic of our first trip together as husband and wife. Both in their mid-60s, my mom and dad would giggle like teenagers when they recalled their...

I'm just coming off 200 interviews and two years of listening to mature wives reflect on -- or moan about -- how they are managing to stick it out in long marriages. Scenes from their relationships that range from 15 to 70 years are woven together in my new book,...

What does it take to stay married to one person, under one roof, for the rest of your life?

I was so interested in that question that I wrote a book attempting to answer it. Over the course of my research, I interviewed 200 women who had been married 15...