Eat, pray and love, all without leaving the dinner table.
My husband and I, and our two sons, ages 12 and 16, eat dinner together every night. As a family. At the table. TV, computers and texting not allowed. We talk, argue, laugh, and plan trivial and important stuff. We look one another directly in the eye and speak out loud, often in full sentences. When you sit across the table from your spouse every single night, and you ask about one another's day, and sometimes even put your hand in his, locking eyes and silently smiling over something your kid just said, that's a powerful message. We eat, there's love and, when Aunt Cathy visits, we even pray.
One newlywed couple scoffs at convention and redefines modern marriage roles.
I'd argue that, for all of my wifely qualities (I can obsess over throw pillows with the best of them), I have an inner husband who tends to drive at least double the legal speed limit and leave socks on the floor, while my actual husband— tall, handsome, manly-guy that he is — has an inner wife who lives to make sure we both have clean underwear.
??Call us Wusband and Hife? ??
These labels, at least, allow for a little overlap: A division of labor based on what we're each best at, not just what's assigned us by virtue of chromosome.??
Of course, in some ways, we resemble happy "normal" newlyweds: I like to cook. For him. My husband, on the other hand, is very able to cook—but usually he'll start the pasta sauce along with a line of questioning like: Do I add water? Should I put it in the microwave? If I add garlic, do I chop it first? Most nights I wind up manning the pan, while he happily goes back to Guitar Hero.
Elizabeth Gilbert's new book uses history to convince her skeptic self to marry.
When Elizabeth Gilbert's foreign-born lover was threatened with permanent exile from the United States, she vowed to marry him so that he could attain U.S. citizenship, and so that they could spend the rest of their lives together. But first, she had to come to terms with the institution of marriage itself, an arrangement that had failed her in the past, leaving her loath to ever marry again. Over the course of writing "Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage," the author of "Eat, Pray, Love" finds that there are many reasons to fly in the face of present-day, negative divorce statistics and commit...and none of them have to do with shared health benefits, joint tax returns or life insurance payout.
Last fall, we decided that the media's plethora of people, events and fill-in-the-blanks "of the year" ratings was lacking a most important element: couples.
We sorted through hundreds of possible pairs -- some famous, some not -- to settle on our top 20 favorite couples of 2007. Some eliminations were easier (no offense, Amy Winehouse and Blake Fielder-Civil) than others.
Our list includes Al Gore sans Tipper, a rumored celebrity "fouple" (faux couple) whom we love even if they're only "best friends" and Elizabeth Gilbert, author of last year's bestselling book Eat, Pray, Love.
Now it's up to you to give the thumbs up or thumbs down to our choices.
Click here to read about Tango's Top 20 Couples of 2007 and vote for your favorites.
Why we named Elizabeth Gilbert and Felipe one of our favorite couples.
Devoted globetrotters, Gilbert and "Felipe" own a store that sells all the beautiful objects they've collected from their travels. "We named our business 'Two Buttons' because a priest in Laos told us that we had so much love for life that we needed nothing more than two buttons in our pockets to get by in the world," reads their website, twobuttons.com. "Actually, sometimes we have gotten by on only one button."
