Chaos became our comfort zone

During our family’s year from hell, a brandnew
crisis would arrive at our doorstep every
4 weeks or so. It was almost as if we had inadvertently
enrolled in the tragedy-of-themonth
club. The hypervigilance that sustained
my wife and me through these crises was not
so conducive for relaxed date nights and handholding.
And when the end of the world
becomes your comfort zone, each new crisis is
actually a relief from the stress of worrying
about what will befall you next.
It reached the point where I felt closest to
my wife when we were racing to the hospital
together. That was our date night.
According to Joseph LeDoux, Ph.D., a neuroscientist
and the author of The Emotional
Brain, fear-based memories are encoded in a
part of our brains called the amygdala. So
while my more logical hippocampus and prefrontal
cortex understood that the year from
hell was over—and that my wife was a person
distinct from that horrible experience—the
story was less clear down in my amygdala.
Eventually, posits LeDoux, my wife and I
came to associate each other’s presence with
stressful situations. Not good.hormonal level. “Men and women do have
‘chemistry,’ ” he says. “A woman gives off pheromones
when she feels taken care of by a man.
What men fail to realize is that on an interpersonal,
chemical level, it’s the small stuff
that really does matter.
“If you want to score 36 points, you don’t
give her 36 roses,” he says. “You give her one
rose on 36 separate occasions.”
When I landed my fi rst book contract, I
viewed it as a chance to fi nally contribute in a
signifi cant way to my family’s bottom line.
More important, the book documented our
family’s year from hell and spoke directly to
the challenges my wife and I had faced as a
couple. In my mind, going off to work each day
was a romantic mission to save the sinking
ship that was our marriage. All my wife knew
was that I was gone. Completely caught up in
my work. For close to a year.
When I fi nally looked up from my work, I
discovered that the marriage I thought I was
saving was gone.

I THINK LOVE DIES IN MUCH SAME WAY THAT
a heart does. Over the life of a relationship, all
the little resentments and tiny disappointments
can accumulate like plaque in an artery,
imperceptibly choking out the intimacy—the
lifeblood of any relationship.
As much as I wish I could blame Rose for
that, I can’t. She’s a wonderful person—intelligent,
idealistic, passionate, and devoted to her
children. It would be so much easier for me to
move on if she were a worthless human being.
And unfortunately for her, despite my lengthy
list of faults, I’m a decent enough guy.
No, I think the ultimate cause of our uncoupling
lay not in all the little things we did wrong,
but in the unanticipated eff ects of all the big
things we did right—from falling madly in love
to having kids. That’s why it’s diffi cult to move
on. But understanding this allows me to look
back at the relationship and appreciate its
meaning and beauty, despite its imperfections.
Rose is, and always will be, the best mistake
I ever made.

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Man to Man - I Love You



in love is awash with the feel-good hormone
dopamine. In fact, love activates the
same pleasure center in the brain
that cocaine does, says Helen
Fisher, Ph.D., a biological
anthropologist and research
professor at Rutgers
University.
But why would humans
choose mates while they’re in
such a compromised state?
“The human animal has not
evolved primarily to be happy,”
says Fisher. “We evolved primarily
to spread our DNA.”
So when Rose and I met and fell
in love, we really were feeling something
bigger than both of us: a primordial
drive to mate. Instead of
acting with our heads, we acted with
our, well, genitals. Bad choice.
This drive didn’t care a lick that I was
just fi nishing grad school, or that I’d previously
decided that I’d never settle down before
my career was humming. It was equally indifferent
to Rose’s upbringing in a nice Jewish
family where a central tenet is that a husband
provides fi nancially for his wife. That made
hitching her wagon to a penniless fi lm student
not necessarily the wisest choice.

We had kids as newlyweds
Right after we were married, my wife’s biological
alarm clock began ringing. Not that I wasn’t
complicit in heeding it—it meant having a lot
of sex. Great work if you can fi nd it, right? And
it was both of those things—great and work.
Trying to conceive can feel like you’re having
a ménage à trois with a fertility chart. What
should have been the most intimate of experiences
was now something we were sharing
with doctors and our families. “Looking forward
to meeting our grandson!” they’d say.
The thing is, making a grandson for somebody
is not very hot. “The most unique aspect
of a romantic relationship is not love, but intimacy,”
says relationship expert David Deida,
author of The Enlightened Sex Manual. “We
love lots of people, including our families and
friends. But what makes a relationship truly
unique is the intimacy you share with your
partner alone.”

While we were trying to conceive, we
called sex “trying.” As in, “We’re going to try
this month.” All that trying yielded two
beautiful boys who are the most important
things on earth for me. But it
also complicated the physical relationship
between Rose and me for
the rest of our marriage.
A couple’s memory of their
passionate early years helps orient
their deepening romance in the
later years of marriage, says Deida.
While other couples can look back
and say, “We’ll always have Paris,” we
got stuck with “We’ll always have that
funky motel off the turnpike where we
had to meet to do it during your
ovulation window.”

We busted gender stereotypes . . .
uncomfortably
Rose earned more money than I did. And not a
little more. Often I felt like the miscellaneous
expense line in her budget. And although a
third of wives outearn their husbands these
days, I’ve never felt comfortable with it. “For
many men, identity and self-esteem depend
on doing well at work,” says Brenda Shoshanna,
Ph.D., the author of Why Men Leave. “So when
a wife earns more, the husband can feel he’s
really not the man in the family.”
A further complication was our decision to
work from home so we could both take care of
the new baby—a great idea that broke bad on
us. When her work line rang, I’d get stuck
changing diapers, enviously watching her do
big busi ness. Meanwhile, of course, as she was
stuck on the phone, she’d enviously watch me
change diapers. It was almost funny. Almost.

My Marriage: The Autopsy

I CAN UNDERSTAND why having a heart
attack is a popular way to die. There’s a
conciseness to it. One minute you’re
enjoying your chicken nuggets, and then—
boom!—you’re gone.
Divorces are like heart attacks. One
minute you’re legally married, and then—
boom!—you sign some papers and your
marriage is declared dead. The divorce
decree, just like an autopsy, states the
time of death and establishes a cause.
But it’s far less revealing than an actual
autopsy. After I signed the divorce papers
legally ending my 10-year marriage, I
stared at the cause: “constructive abandonment.”
This means that even though
my wife, Rose, and I had been living
together under the same roof, we’d jointly
abandoned our roles as husband and
wife. In other words, the marriage failed
because we failed to be married. That’s
kind of like saying the cause of death was
ceasing to live.
While this may fulfi ll the requirements
of the New York State court, it would
never hold up on CSI.
So I decided to conduct my own marriage
autopsy, with the help of a half dozen relationship
experts. You’re going to want to
hear the results. Why? Because I bet you’re
making some of the same mistakes.

Honey Mustard Salmon with Roasted Asparagus

YOU’LL NEED
1 Tbsp unsalted butter
1 Tbsp brown sugar
2 Tbsp Dijon mustard
1 Tbsp honey
1 Tbsp low-sodium soy sauce
1 lb asparagus, trimmed
2 Tbsp olive oil
¼ cup freshly grated Parmesan
Salt and pepper to taste
4 salmon fillets (6 oz each)
THE BEST LIFE
Secrets of
the stalk
PICK IT
Buy asparagus that’s
bright green and firm,
with unopen tips, says
Tal Ronnen, author of
The Conscious Cook.
STORE IT
Wrap the ends in a
damp paper towel,
and store in the fridge
in a sealed zip-top
bag. Eat within 3 days.
PREP IT
Bend each stalk like a
twig. The woody portion
should snap off at
just the right place.
COOK AND WIN!
Submit your own fast
recipe for a chance to
win a 12-piece Cuisinart
Green Gourmet
Cookware set, a $250
value. See MensHealth.
com/shortordercook.
1 Heat the oven to 400°F.
Combine the butter and
brown sugar in a bowl and
microwave until the butter
and sugar have melted
together, about 30 seconds.
Stir in the mustard, honey,
and soy sauce.
2 Toss the asparagus with
1 tablespoon of the oil, the
Parmesan, and some salt
and pepper. Place the
stalks in a baking dish and
roast until they’re al dente,
10 to 12 minutes.
3 Meanwhile, heat the
remaining tablespoon of oil
in an ovenproof skillet over
high heat. Season the fillets
with salt and pepper and
add them to the pan, flesh
side down. Cook them until
browned on one side, 3 to 4
minutes. Then flip them,
brush on half the honey
mustard, and place the pan
in the oven. Bake until the
salmon is firm and flakes
easily (but before white
solids begin to form on the
surface), about 5 minutes.
Remove the fillets from the
oven and brush them with
more honey mustard. Serve
the salmon with the asparagus.
Makes 4 servings
PER SERVING 360 calories,
38 grams (g) protein, 17 g
fat, 550 milligrams sodium