Our 23rd wedding anniversary is actually May 5 but Lauren will leave for a beach outing tomorrow so we celebrated our dinner at Portico tonight.

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I can’t help but be happy for my cousin, Margot. Last Friday, she walked down the aisle in her lovely beaded gown with Dwight, the love of her life. I have often wondered why my beautiful, kind and smart cousin-doctor was still single at 30 something. I often dismissed it as not finding the right man. Wise girl. I never asked her but I am sure she often gets the brunt of questions from nosy relatives.

“Why are you not married yet? ang ganda ganda mo. wala pa ba nagkagusto sa yo? .”

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How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

When my ex-boyfriend swept me off my feet 30 years ago, it happened at the UP sunken garden just before sunset. I screamed in delight as Butch kept twirling me around and around. Put me down now. I wanted it to last forever but a crowd of onlookers oogling at us from a distance brought us back to reality. We had no shame. Truly, madly, deeply in love. We were optimistic that whatever flaws we had could easily be worked out. Such an idealistic thought. A friend told me that the thing I loved most from my boyfriend is the thing that I’d hate about him when I get married.

Is it true?

This conversion chart for dating is meant as a joke but in reality, there is some truth about it.

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The captivating news feature , Fighting With Your Spouse Is Good For Your Health caught my eye. But hold your horses, war freak spouses. Listen, it has to be a good fight . Not the cat-dog fight. Preliminary results from a University of Michigan study found couples that suppress anger die earlier than couples in which one or both partners express their anger and resolve the conflict..

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Every now and then, I get bombarded with text messages from wives asking for my advice on their marital woes. The thing is I am not a counselor and I can only speak for myself. The fact that the person on the other end is a stranger makes it difficult for me to reply back with any sort of friendly advice.

You know the most common text messages I receive are :

1. The Other Woman or suspicions of the latter because of questionable text messages caught in their husband’s cellphone. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned

2. Tired of changing their husband’s dysfunctional habits or attitude.

It’s not that simple to say leave thy husband especially if one promised to love and honor till death do us part (except abusive behavior because I don’t believe a wife should be a punching bag). I can’t blame these women because I too was once caught in trying to save my husband from despair. Simply said, my life’s focus was on changing my husband instead of myself. Of course, I didn’t know better. I thought being a martyr was the way to go instead of being true to myself, the feisty and bitchy me.

Rather than focusing on my husband, I reinvented myself.

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Warning: Not for the Grinch or those suffering the Holiday Blues. This is dedicated to Aileen’s Paskong Pinoy compilation.

If you have read our love story, you would know that this is our 30th Christmas together of which seven years were spent physically apart from each other. Those seven Christmases were spent with my dad and siblings in Cebu. You can imagine what it was like for a lovestruck couple like us who had no means of communication during the two week break. Sure, there was the expensive long distance calls which needed an operator to get a connection. Suffice it to say that all he could manage to blurt out was Merry Christmas…how are you?…sige, expensive na. Love you. bye. which reminds me of that Smart commercial over the radio. No lovers’ conversation. No time to swoon or babble sweet nothings. Nada.

Lucky for most couples these days, there is email, text messaging, cellphone calls, video chat and what not. I yearned to be with my boyfriend during Christmas day but I knew that my family of origin was my number one priority. The meaning of Christmas is about God’s love that He brought Jesus Christ to this world. Christmas is about love , the love and joy of family. I understood that well.

To make up for the physical separation, the 18 year old Butch started this brillant idea of having an annual Christmas dinner date tradition where we celebrated the Christmas message of love. Our love. On our first Christmas date together by the Manila Bay, the hopelessly romantic Butch held my hand and pointed our hands towards the moon as if we were holding the moon together. In the most seductive voice, he whispered to my ears:

don’t worry, my love. Even if we are not together on Christmas day, just stare at the moon. Hold it and know that I am holding it too. We are together in spirit. The moon sees us.

Deeply touched and giddy all over, the equally hopelessly romantic me almost cried at his sappiness. He assured me that this separation was only temporary and that we would be spending Christmas for the rest of our lives. Every Christmas day in Cebu for the next 7 years, I strolled outside my home standing there by the garden, blanketed by the twinkling stars trying to hold the moon and knowing that Butch would do the same. (of course, I cannot vouch that he was doing the same.)

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I just realized that it’s the first time Butch and I are travelling without the kids. The last time we were by ourselves was our honeymoon twenty-two years ago. Since then, our children have always been the number 1 priority in our lives next to us. We have been planning for a family vacation for some time now but our schedules never match. Either one kid is busy with school activities or the other has work obligations. Butch and I just decided to travel on our own without them. He didn’t want the kids to be home alone even when I assure him that my aunt is just a block away for emergency. After all security precautions, we took the weekend off to burn our devalued dollars for Christmas shopping in Singapore. The plane fare alone will be paid from the savings of the gadgets we intend to buy for the two girls. Of course, the most important thing of all is Butch and I will have a lot of romantic moments together getting lost in Singapore.

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I am so proud of my husband. Not only is he the breadwinner, he’s also the cook during weekends. I’m lazy like that. But what I’m really proud off are the positive changes in him since we gave each other a second wind in our marriage. In the past, he’d find excuses to entertain clients in fine dining places or anywhere else but home. Look at him now! A cook.

My stubborn nature often blamed my husband for the marital discord. A rock must have hit my head one day when I realized I, too, am part of the equation in the marriage. One of the many things I corrected was the way I’d argue with my husband. See, my husband rants a lot when he is frustrated and is quite short-tempered as a result. Oftentimes, I end up getting riled up when he is in that brooding mood. After 29 years of togetherness, I finally perfected the fine art of arguing with my dear husband. Here are my strategies :

1. Using powerful words such as “Yes, dear I see exactly where you’re coming from. You mean…….”
This statement makes it clear enough that I heard my husband. That’s all he really wants— to be validated. By agreeing with him, I gradually simmer down his anger.

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How will I know He is the One?, laments Aileen. What a common question to most of the single people out there.

And I am going to give the same reply that Lauren whined about : You just Know

Before Aileen starts to throw apples at me. Ooops. Let me finish this first. I will list down some important pre-requisites before one meets THE ONE based on the book “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne (I will write a review soon). This is all for you out there who are searching for The One!

1. Ask the question to yourself: What do I seek for in The One? Yes, you might have already made a detailed list of your ideal guy. My daughter also listed the characteristics of her ideal guy. But does it stop there? Are you clear on the perfect lifetime partner for you? Is your list based on unrealistic expectations like hoping your future partner is exactly like your dad or mom? If you are not clear , you will be sending mixed signals and attract mixed results.

Start saying to yourself : “I want to meet The One with these characteristics and be with this person the rest of my life.”

I didn’t know it back then when I first met my husband that He was The One. I was thirteen when I listed down the physical characteristics of my ideal boyfriend . I even visualized how he looked like, a mestizo. The mestizos in Cebu belonged to the popular mestizas. And I didn’t belong in that class. Hummph. But I thought “Just you wait and see, my future boyfriend is going to be a mestizo, and he is going to be smart and sexy!” Of course at the time I met my boyfriend , I didn’t expect him to be my husband. After all, I was just a shallow teenager.

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